


The Fire In Which We Burn

by MizJoely, wickedwanton



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sherlolly - Freeform, Time Travel, Victorian Sherlolly, Warstan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 12:55:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 39,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2270526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizJoely/pseuds/MizJoely, https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedwanton/pseuds/wickedwanton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Time is the school in which we learn/Time is the fire in which we burn." Molly Hooper's recurring nightmare of burning to death while an unknown man calls out to her in desperation is only the start of the strange path fate has mapped out for her. Sherlock/Molly, Sherlolly time travel AU where Modern!Molly ends up romantically involved with Victorian!Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Man of Her Dreams?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wickedwanton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedwanton/gifts).



> This is an AU for S.3 onwards, as it was was mostly written and plotted out well before then.

**Prologue**

The dream is always of fire, the nightmare that jolts her awake at least once every few months, starting with puberty. She tells no one about it; her father is already ill once they start, her mother walking around with lines of strain about her eyes and a tight, false smile on her lips as she reassures twelve-year-old Molly Hooper that everything is fine, just fine. When her father passes away two years later, the nightmare intensifies, happening almost every night for six months.

_Fire, the scent of smoke, the despairing knowledge that she can’t escape, that the fire will claim her, burn her, kill her hopes and dreams as well as her body. The sound of a man’s voice calling to her in desperation. Her own feeble attempts to call back, stymied by the racking coughs that overwhelm her as the flames lick ever closer..._

She awakens from this nightmare with a stifled cry on her lips and tears running down her cheeks, tears of mourning rather than pain, because any dream-pain vanishes like the smoke that chokes her breath. She is always safe and sound in her own bed, even after her father’s death; and she always feels the same sense of loss and betrayal, as if she’s had something stolen from her.

There are other dreams as well, but she doesn’t associate the two – the recurring nightmare and the vague dreams of a man she assumes isn’t real – until many, many years later.

 

**The Man of Her Dreams? (January-June 2008)**

The first time Molly Hooper meets Sherlock Holmes in the flesh she thinks he's the man of her dreams.

Literally. 

She's been dreaming her entire life of a man with grey eyes and dark curls, although his other features are vague and unformed in the way of most dream men. But when she suddenly starts seeing that same face in various reflective surfaces at work – she's recently been employed by St. Bartholomew's hospital as their most junior pathologist – she begins to wonder if her dream man is actually a manifestation of some kind of psychosis.

If he is, it isn't a psychosis that interferes with her mental abilities or day-to-day life in any way; she hears no voices whispering in her mind and the visions are simply stable images of the same man's face over and over again. At first she tries to dismiss them as being brought on by loneliness or overwork or too much caffeine: loneliness due to the fact that she very few friends; overwork attributable to the extra-long hours she works because she frankly finds it hard to say no when colleagues ask her to do 'just one more thing before you leave'; and with coffee being one of her four main food groups her caffeine consumption has been off the scale lately.

In the beginning, these visions are just as vague as her dreams; grey eyes, dark, unruly curls, pale masculine features. However, as time passes and she settles into her position at St. Bart's, as everyone calls it, the visions sharpen so that she clearly sees the features that have been so elusive in her dreaming mind. 

The first time it happens she thinks there is someone actually in the room with her. She is in the ladies' locker room, fixing her hair, rebraiding it during her break so as not to have it inconveniently flop into her face during an autopsy, when the man’s face appears in the mirror, as if he's standing somewhere behind her. She starts and turns, only to discover that, no, she is still alone. When she returns her bewildered gaze to the mirror, only her own face looks back at her.

She shrugs that moment off, although she can't help wistfully wondering what she’d have done if she’d turned and actually found him behind her.

“Great. I'm going mental,” she announces to the room at large. “And talking to myself, that's really going to help.” Shaking her head, she hurries out of the locker room. She's gasping for a cuppa; obviously dehydration is affecting her vision.

She doesn't seriously consider a supernatural or spiritual or even Doctor Who explanation until the fleeting glimpses of her dream man start haunting her in places other than the hospital; on the Tube when the windows should reflect only herself and her fellow travellers; in the window of a shop when idly studying a pair of extremely high-heeled shoes she will never have the nerve to actually wear; and, most disturbing of all, in her bathroom mirror at her flat.

That particular vision or reflection or glimpse into an alternate universe (she is heavy on the ‘Doctor Who’ theory at this point) is startlingly clear and detailed, not simply there and gone in a flash like all the others. She finds herself staring, mesmerised, at the strange man's profile. He appears to be talking to someone, reaching up now and again with animated gestures, his entire face alive with curiosity and enjoyment as his cupid's-bow lips silently move. 

His dark curls have been disciplined and sleeked back, showing off the sideburns she's never noticed before. His hands, when they flash into view, are long and aristocratic, quite as expressive as his gorgeous mouth and those eyes that seem to peer right into her soul when he turns as if to look at her...

The ringing of her mobile shatters her concentration as she clutches her towel to her chest. When she glances down automatically to where it sits on her bathroom counter and then back up to the mirror, the image is gone, replaced by her own, somewhat frustrated and confused face.

That is in November. Two months later, the man himself strolls into the Path lab with Mike Stamford in his wake, and Molly drops the stack of microscope slides she is holding as her face flushes hot and cold and her heart begins to pound in her chest. How can he be here, in the real world? Has she actually gone insane?

She manages to keep from panicking as Mike introduces her to the stranger. “Sherlock Holmes, please meet Dr. Molly Hooper, our newest staff pathologist and already one of our best.” Mike sounds as proud of her as her own father might have, had he lived long enough to see his only child graduate from university, and Molly blushes as he continues: “Graduated first in her class – ”

“And two years early due to her early admission into the programme, yes, thank you, Dr. Stamford,” the other man cuts in, his voice a deep baritone that sends chills shooting up and down Molly's spine and raises goosebumps on her arms, in spite of the bored tones in which he speaks. 

She blushes (again) and stammers and holds out her hand, managing to get enough control over her voice to ask him how he knew she'd graduated early. “Your age,” he replies, still sounding bored, then makes one of his rapid-fire assessments that she will become accustomed to hearing in the future. “Single, never married, one cat, you live within two Tube stops of the hospital and regularly walk to work unless you’re running late. Won’t be able to assess your skill levels till I’m able to review one of your autopsies in person, but Stamford isn’t given to hyperbole so I suppose you’re relatively competent. Is that microscope available or do I have to wait until you’ve cleaned up the mess you just made?”

She feels herself flushing again, embarrassed that he has brought up her clumsiness in so pointed a fashion, but Mike simply grins and tells her not to worry, that it’s just how Sherlock is. Then he helps her clean up the broken microscope slides as she tries to apologize and Sherlock simply stands to the side, looking bored and impatient while he waits for them to get out of his way, because apparently the microscope Molly had planned to use is the only one he wants now.

She steals glances at him as he works, mentally comparing the real thing (how can there be a ‘real thing,’ it shouldn’t be possible!) with the man from her visions and dreams. Same aristocratic profile. Same dark curls that her fingers itch to run through, although longer in reality than she’s been seeing them. No sideburns, but the fingers and hands are certainly the same – long and pale and elegant and she lingers on the memory of how it felt when he shook her hand. Cool to the touch, not sweaty at all, but he is so poised and self-contained she can’t imagine them feeling any other way.

The main point of difference is the eyes. She puzzles over that as she excuses herself to the two men and hurries down to the morgue to pick up some files she left and now realizes she needs in order to continue with the report she's compiling. The eyes in her visions have always been the clearest things she sees – grey and piercing, intelligence practically shining from their depths.

The real man has the same piercing intelligence, but Sherlock’s eyes are much harder to pin down as to colour – blue, green, a mixture of the two? – certainly not unless she is able to spend more than a few seconds gazing into them. Which, somehow, she does not foresee happening with the cold, aloof man she’s just met.

When she returns to the lab Mike is gone and Sherlock is still peering into the microscope, not appearing to have moved since she left. “So, I'm back,” she says, with no motive other than to let him know he's no longer alone in the room. Or so she tells herself, when really she knows it's because she secretly hopes to hear him speak again. To see if he looks up, offers any sign of recognition.

He does neither, merely grunts and adjusts the knob and hunches his shoulders a bit, all clear body language for 'stop bothering me I'm busy'. She sighs quietly and places the files next to her own work station.

After about an hour she realizes she's uncomfortably warm and shrugs out of her lab coat. She rises and stretches, goes over to hang it on the hook near the door, then decides she needs to lose the cardigan she's wearing as well. It's her favourite, the white one dotted with cherries that her mother bought for her the year before she'd moved to Australia with her new husband, when Molly had just graduated medical school. She sheds the cardigan, revealing her pink blouse beneath it with three-quarter length sleeves and decides it should be enough to keep her comfortable.

She returns to her work station, goes through her files and frowns; one is missing. Oh, right, she put it back earlier in the day, thinking she wouldn't need it, but of course she does. So she rises to her feet and heads for the filing cabinet, ridiculously aware of the fact that she'll have to pass Sherlock in order to get there...and cursing her heart for suddenly pounding in her chest as she does so.

It takes her a few minutes to locate the appropriate file, and when she turns back she squeaks in surprise and nearly falls into the open drawer; Sherlock has left his work station so silently, approached her without saying anything, and he is right there, inches away from her, staring intently at her right forearm, just above her wrist.

“You've burned yourself,” he says, lifting his eyes to meet hers.

She nods and stammers out an explanation; she'd been in a rush this morning, had tried to cook breakfast for herself only to be spattered by the bacon grease badly enough to require the application of burn cream and a gauze pad. “And then of course Toby – my cat, oh, you already know that, sorry! – he ate the bacon after it fell on the floor, greedy beast!” she finishes up with a nervous laugh.

He remains silent, the expression on his face almost a frown, almost puzzled, eyebrows slanting together. His eyes hint at the steely grey she's seen so many times but they are still very, very blue. Lovely, but not quite the same. Does it matter? She can't say, certainly not when he seems to snap out of whatever spell has temporarily overcome him and turns away without saying another word.

She considers trying to strike up another conversation after he returns to his seat at the microscope, or at least asking why he'd felt the burn on her arm was worth getting up for in the first place if he wasn't going to so much as offer his sympathies, but the tight set of his shoulders and the frown tugging at his lips warn her off. So she tries to bury herself back in her own research, and eventually becomes absorbed enough to almost forget his presence at the next table.

Almost. When he rises abruptly to his feet and heads over to the row of Bunsen burners, she startles and watches him cross the room. He is graceful and moves with a lean economy she envies even as she admires it.

When he turns on the flame, however, a sudden panic washes over her, seemingly out of nowhere; she gasps and jumps to her feet, scattering files to the floor and causing him to turn and frown at her. Heart pounding madly in her chest, she fumbles out an excuse, piles the paperwork into a haphazard mound on the table and flees the room.

Literally flees; it is all she can do not to break into a run as she makes her way to the ladies' and from there into a cubicle. She slides the lock into place and sits, fully clothed, on top of the toilet seat, burying her face in her suddenly-shaking hands.

 _What the hell was that?_ she wonders as her heart finally starts to slow back to normal, as her breathing becomes less laboured and her shaking begins to ease. She has never suffered from a panic attack in her life, but she is well aware of the symptoms, and this definitely qualifies.

She waits a few minutes to make sure the symptoms aren't about to re-manifest, then leaves the cubicle, splashes some water on her face and examines her reflection. She has a moment of disconnection as she stares into her own anxious brown eyes, as if she is staring at another woman, another Molly Hooper instead of herself; the hair seems wrong, as if she's never worn it in a simple pony-tail before, as if it should be piled on top of her head in a bun. Even her name seems wrong for a split second; she's not Molly, she's Margaret...

The moment passes and she shakes her head. The reflection in the mirror is just her reflection and clearly she is more shaken by Sherlock's existence than she'd thought she was. Maybe it will be a good idea to take the rest of the afternoon as a sick day; Mike won't mind as the workload is light, and it isn't that long till the end of her shift and she really, really needs to take some time to try and figure things out.

Giving her reflection a sharp nod, she exits the ladies' and heads back to the lab.

It's empty. Sherlock is gone, the burner is no longer alight with flame, and her files have been neatly organized, all loose papers, she quickly ascertains, returned to their proper places. He is a puzzle, Sherlock Holmes, and even if she didn't have her dreams and visions to further complicate things, she knows she would be just as irresistibly drawn to him.

She puzzles over his existence all the rest of that day – after enduring Mike's gentle teasing at her reaction to first meeting him and getting permission to bugger off early – and well into the night, tossing and turning restlessly in her lonely bed. Why has fate or God or whoever sent her visions of a man she thought she could never have, then practically shoved him into her life even though it is abundantly clear to her that he has no idea who she is, and no interest in learning?

That turns out to be the crux of her dilemma throughout the next several months, as Sherlock becomes a familiar presence in her waking life and the visions gradually stop…but not the dreams. If anything, they intensify, frequently to the point where even the memory of them makes her blush. Oh, nothing terribly detailed happens even within the confines of her dreaming mind, but she certainly becomes familiar with his dream-self’s lips on hers, his body pressed against hers and his arms embracing her. She feels warm and safe, wanted and loved in those dreams, feelings sadly not aroused by the real Sherlock, who is much more likely to make her feel self-conscious and stupid.

Although he is as cold and dismissive of her as he is of everyone else she sees him interacting with, she can’t help noticing that she's the pathologist he seeks out most frequently to work with. It might be because she offers up the fewest objections to him, or is the most pliable, but she likes to think it's also because she shows the most interest in his lightning-fast deductions and the least revulsion to his sometimes bizarre experiments. 

Time passes, Molly gradually becomes used to his abrupt and abrasive manner, and she finds herself becoming even more fascinated by the real man. Yes, he is handsome and radiates strength and energy in his tall, whip-thin frame, but it is his mind that captivates her the most. Sealing her fate, as it were. If it was simply his looks – and that marvelous, marvelous voice of his – that attracted her, that would be one thing. But to hear him speak, to listen to that brilliant mind at work...she's lost from the moment they meet even though she is certain he only sees her as a convenient pathologist, an extension of the lab rather than an actual person.

She's come around to believing the least implausible explanation for her sightings of him; that somehow, in spite of no family history of any sort of precognitive abilities, she's been granted brief glimpses into the future. She is a scientist and so unwilling to entertain any sort of truly supernatural connection between them, but she is not so rigid and narrow minded as to dismiss something outside the norm just because it doesn’t fit comfortably into her world view. Yes, it is possible that other dimensions or realities exist, but without other evidence to show that either she’s been pulled into an alternate world or that Sherlock has stepped into this reality from her dreams, she’s content to go with the simplest explanation. Occam’s Razor. 

If she has somehow been gifted with what her Irish Nana would no doubt call ‘The Sight,’ it will also explain why Sherlock shows no recognition of her; she was the one doing all the seeing, as if viewing him through a one-way mirror. It still doesn’t explain the differences between vision and reality – most notably the eye colour – but it makes the most sense of any explanation she can come up with. But his lack of knowledge of her means that she has to be the one to try and find a way to get him to look at her in a different way. During these first few months, however, she is unable to put together a coherent sentence in his presence unless she is deep in her work, speaking her autopsy findings into the microphone or defending her findings in the path lab. 

Things finally change between them late in the summer, but it isn’t a good change.


	2. Kill the Buzzing of My Brain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of drug use.

**Kill The Buzzing Of My Brain (Summer 2008)**

Molly is introduced to DI Greg Lestrade, Sherlock's main contact at the Met, the man he does the most consulting for. When, one day, Sherlock rushes out of the morgue on some mysterious errand or other, his eyes wild and hair nearly standing on end from him raking his fingers through it, the detective inspector turns to her and, out of the blue, declares: “I think I can trust you to be discreet about this, yeah, Dr. Hooper?”

“Molly,” she says automatically, her eyes still on the doors to the morgue as she tries to puzzle out Sherlock's unusually manic exit. Something has been off about him for some time now, she is just beginning to realize, only there is always something off about Sherlock in general so she hasn't actually paid very close attention to the odd shifts in his behaviour since the beginning of summer. “Be discreet about what, Detective Inspector?” she asks, making a deliberate effort to keep her mind on the conversation at hand and not her vague worries about a man who still seems to barely tolerate her in spite of her efforts to get to know him better...and to give him the opportunity to get to know her better as well.

An opportunity he has yet to take advantage of. And after DI Lestrade confides his suspicions to her, she wonders if the reason fate or whoever has given her her glimpses into the future is because she isn't meant to connect to Sherlock romantically, as she's always hoped, but in more of a caretaking capacity.

“I think he's on something.”

“Oh, he's onto something about the case? That's great, that's fan...” Molly falls silent as she realizes she has misheard what Lestrade was saying, sees the gravity in his eyes as he corrects her.

She stares at him, disconcerted and suddenly at a loss for words. Sherlock, taking drugs? Risking that beautiful, brilliant mind of his for something so ridiculously dangerous? She shakes her head in denial, but Lestrade must read something in her expression that speaks to his own suspicions, because he presses her on it. “You think so, too.”

“N-no, he wouldn't...he would never do something that might affect his mind!” she blurts out, but as soon as she says it she knows she's wrong – and that DI Lestrade is right.

“Look, Dr. Hoop – Molly,” he corrects himself. “I've known Sherlock for a couple of years now, and one thing I can tell you is that the only reason he would take anything would be because of his mind. Not to hurt it, per se, but to try and shut it down once in a while. Only lately, it seems he's gone from occasional user to, well, addict, not to put too fine a point on it. Do you know why I'm sharing this with you?”

She blinks and stares at him. “Because you know I won't say anything to anyone?” she hazards, although how a man she's just met might understand how trustworthy she is is beyond her. Well, if he were Sherlock Holmes he might be able to ascertain that fact about her personality, but she suspects there aren't very many people in the world whose minds function at the same level as Sherlock's...and no matter how intelligent, no matter how likeable, she doubts DI Lestrade is at that same level of brilliance.

He starts to shake his head, then pauses and nods instead. “That's part of it, yeah. But the reason I know you won't tell anyone something said to you in confidence,” he adds, as if he has read her mind, “is because Sherlock trusts you.”

She stares at him. “Really? That's...nice.” Nice and completely unexpected. It is a truth that Sherlock himself will not share with her for another two years and under vastly different circumstances, although it will happen in this very building.

Lestrade goes on, “The thing is, I've been willing to turn a blind eye when it was only now and again, but it's been more and more frequently and frankly, if he doesn't straighten up I'm not going to be able to use him as a consultant anymore.”

Molly gasps and immediately puts her hand over her mouth, eyes wide as she considers the implications of what Lestrade has just said. She and Sherlock have shared only a handful of actual conversations since she first met him in January, but one thing she does know about him is how important the work is to him. If he were no longer allowed to consult on Scotland Yard cases, if all he had to occupy his ferocious intellect were the occasional private cases he's mentioned – dismissively and with a great deal of contempt for the most part – she has absolutely no idea how he would react, or what it would do to him.

She blurts out her feelings to Lestrade, who nods agreement with her as she trails off. “Yeah, I know. Thing is, if I say something to him he'll just deny it, find some way to talk rings around me and ignore whatever I have to say on the subject. What the hell do I know, I'm just a copper, right?” His lips twist in a wry smile, and Molly understands that he is more like her than she would have thought; he tries not to take Sherlock's sometimes hurtful words personally, understanding that it is simply who the man is. That his mind works on a completely different level to theirs, and that he is, quite frankly, about as socially inept as a toddler unless he makes a special effort not to be. Which he rarely does. 

“Honestly, Inspector Lestrade, I don't think he'll listen to me any better than you,” Molly admits with a sad smile of her own. “You may be just a copper, but most of the time I don't think he even realizes I'm a human being.”

Lestrade shakes his head firmly. “Oh, he knows you're a human being, Molly – and call me Greg, yeah? At least when it's just us talking about Sherlock behind his back,” he adds with a self-deprecating grin. “He doesn't have a lot of people in his life he can trust – if you asked, he'd probably tell you he doesn't have friends at all, but I'm hoping one day he'll discover that not only are the rest of us human beings, but he is, too. And I'm not asking you to confront him, just...keep an eye on him, if you don't mind? I know he works with you more than the other pathologists, and I know you get on with him about as well as anyone can. If he ever seems to...I dunno, cross a line, or need help, just let me know.” He presses his card into her hands and she nods and accepts it, slipping it into her trouser pocket so she doesn't accidentally leave it behind at the end of her shift.

When Sherlock returns she is busy putting the body he and Lestrade had come to examine back into its refrigerated storage compartment, and Lestrade is on his mobile. However, as soon as Molly turns to face Sherlock, her bright smile falters. Sherlock's eyes are narrowed, and he is darting his glance back and forth between the two of them, the very picture of suspicion. She tries to ignore the feeling that she's somehow betrayed him by listening to what Greg had to say and agreeing with it, but is certain that the guilt she is feeling is as plain to Sherlock as if she had the conversation inked on her forehead.

When the detective inspector asks Sherlock if he's ready to go, he waves the other man off, spouts out his deductions about the case – which prove to be spot on, Molly later learns – and tells Lestrade he has some unfinished business to see to at the hospital. Lestrade hesitates, gives Molly a sympathetic look, then heads through the doors.

Leaving the two of them, Molly and Sherlock, alone.

Molly starts to say something, but Sherlock cuts her off with an even darker frown. “I don't know what Lestrade said to you, but I can _guess_ ,” he says with heavy sarcasm. The word isn't one he uses in reference to himself, ever. Another sign he isn't quite himself, or merely his obvious temper leading to imprecision in language he usually avoids? “He's worried about me, and he wants you to be worried about me as well, to keep an eye on me and go tattling off to him if you see any signs of me losing control or going over the edge, is that it?”

He is trying to intimidate her, and doing a damned good job of it, too, but Molly somehow finds the internal fortitude to stand up to him. She straightens her shoulders, looks him squarely in the eye and says: “Yes. That's exactly it.”

He looks taken aback, as if he wasn't expecting her to admit it, and she uses his momentary hesitation to plunge ahead with what she now realizes she wants – no, has – to say to him. “I'm worried, too, Sherlock. You haven't been...haven't been yourself lately. And no, I don't know you well enough to say that, but I'm saying it anyway. Because I care.”

Wrong thing to say, she realizes as soon as the word leaves her mouth. He draws back, lip curled in disdain and unleashes on her. “Oh, you _care_ , how _nice_ , how _lovely_ ,” he says, voice dripping venom. “You're worried about me. You've known me less than ten months, Dr. Hooper, and I would appreciate it if you would kindly keep your _feelings_ to yourself in future. I can take care of myself, and you and Lestrade need to stay out of my personal business as ours is a strictly professional relationship – if you can call our occasional interactions even that much. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a case to solve.” 

Then he turns and stalks out of the morgue, leaving Molly trembling and on the verge of tears – not so much because of his hurtful words, but because she realizes he really is in trouble, and absolutely unwilling to accept any kind of help, from her or anyone else. Sherlock Holmes, she realizes with an ache in her heart, will follow his current path until he is good and ready to see it for the trap it is...or until it kills him.


	3. Swap Our Places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the aftereffects of drug use.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the lovely reviews so far, glad you're enjoying this odd little tale! This continues on from what happened last time, but there will be all sorts of time jumps after this until Molly actually makes her *real* time jump to the past.
> 
> And because I have the memory of a gnat, I completely forgot to give a shout out to my awesome beta moonmama, who looked over these chapters for me. Any mistakes left are mine.

**Swap Our Places (October 2008)**

She is in her flat, curled up on the sofa with her cat Toby purring in her lap, lost in a Regency romance when she hears the sound of someone at her door. She drops the book and rises to her feet, dumping her protesting cat onto the floor as she gropes for the cricket bat she keeps on hand at all times. Ever since someone broke into Mrs. Witherspoon's flat last winter she’s been taking precautions. Tonight is the first time she hasn't felt as if she's being silly and overreactive.

No one should be in the hall; the main entrance has a row of buzzers for visitors to press if they need entry, and she most emphatically did not hear the sound of either the buzzer or someone announcing their presence. She has never been _that_ lost in even the most engrossing of novels.

There is no point in pretending there's no one home, since whoever’s on the other side of her door has certainly heard her fumbling around, trying to shush Toby and dropping her mobile on the floor in the process. “Who is it?” she calls out, one finger on the autodial for 999, the other hand wrapped tightly around the handle of the cricket bat. It’s probably terrible form, but doesn't really care at the moment.

There is no answer at first, just the sound of ragged breathing as she presses her ear against the door. Then, muffled by the barrier between them but still instantly recognizable to her, she hears, “Molly, it’s me. I think I’m…in trouble.”

She drops the cricket bat and (for the second time) her mobile, unlocking and opening the door with suddenly shaking hands. Even if Sherlock hadn’t said the word 'trouble' she would have known something was wrong; he has never come to see her at her flat before. She had no idea he even knew where she lives.

The bad feeling his words have given her grows as she takes in the sight of him: impeccably dressed as always, still wearing the Belstaff over a posh black suit and aubergine dress shirt, but the other details are wrong. His hair is an unruly tangle, his face paler than normal, his breathing ragged, his eyes bloodshot and sunken as he weaves unsteadily on his feet…and then suddenly he is collapsing slowly into her arms, eyes fluttering shut – but not before she sees the pinholes his pupils have become. Then the two of them are on the floor, his weight too much for her to bear; she didn’t have time to brace herself but at least she managed to break his fall somewhat before they slide to the floor in a tangled heap.

The words burst out of her before she can stop them. “Goddamn it, Sherlock! Do you have to be so bloody stupid?” She has never spoken so harshly to him before – rarely speaks this harshly to _anyone_ – but he has frightened her so badly that now her entire body is shaking; she’s terrified that he has come to her too late for her to help him.

His eyes slowly reopen, although at first she is too busy pushing herself up under his shoulder, trying to get him off the floor, to notice. When she sees his eyelids flickering, his gaze wandering all over her face, she feels a keen sense of relief; she may be vague on signs of overdose, even with the research she's done after that frightening conversation with DI Lestrade back in August, but she knows that any signs of consciousness are good.

She misses the sudden flash of surprise in his gaze as she continues her attempts to disentangle their bodies, or the way those blue-green orbs momentarily darken to a steely grey. If she had seen, she would have recognized the eyes from her dreams and visions. But she doesn’t; the moment passes, and although she is unaware of the fact, she is no longer supporting her own Sherlock Holmes, but one born in an earlier century, time conspiring to swap two souls into one another’s bodies as each is reeling from unintended overdose.

She tugs at his sleeve as she tries to balance his tall, lanky form against her own, much shorter stature – who knew such a skinny bit of nothing would be so heavy? Some part of her files this fact away, the weight of him against her body, and she knows it will visit her in her dreams later – both the good ones and the nightmares his presence here in such condition is bound to bring. She shudders at the thought of it triggering her recurring nightmare of burning to death in a fire, but focuses on the here and now; Sherlock is her priority, and she will just have to deal with whatever consequences may occur later.

With a grunt that is far from ladylike she manages to pull him upright to a sitting position, both hands tightly wrapped in the lapels of his coat. Tears are flowing from her eyes, but she has no energy to spare for them; even if she did, if she tried to wipe them away, it’s likely that she and Sherlock would simply end up tumbled back on the floor. So she lets them flow, another consequence to temporarily ignore.

Sherlock seems to focus on her again, his eyes wandering from her face down to her chest, then widening a bit as he takes in her black t-shirt with its red Rolling Stones logo, before moving down to her jeans and then for some reason to her hands. He is resting against the door frame, slumped but semi-upright, and she needs to get a closer look at his eyes so she grabs him by the jaw and forces his head back to try and regain his full attention – or as much of it as he's capable of giving her, considering his current condition.

“How much did you take?” She follows the bobbing motion of his head on his neck. Her hair falls into her face as she moves closer, peering into his eyes, but she ignores it as she repeats herself, speaking slowly and clearly and with a great deal more force than she might have if she weren't suddenly furious with him. “How. Much. Did. You. _Take_?” 

Her breath catches as he meets her gaze and, inexplicably, smiles at her. Not one of his false, please-do-something-for-me-Molly smiles, but a genuine smile. Or as genuine as can be managed considering the circumstances. He appears to actually be seeing her, and the thought that he has never looked at her so closely as he is now passes through her mind before she shakes it off. Now is not the time for romantic wishful thinking; something needs to be done to help snap him out of this, and it needs to be done _now_.

Before she can put thought into action, however, he breathes out two words that nearly stop her heart: “So beautiful.”

The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them: “Oh, shit!” She drops her head to her chest, trying to regain control of her suddenly ragged breath, to slow her racing heart. Hasn't she just chided herself for thinking like a silly, love-struck girl instead of a medical professional?

With that thought in mind, knowing that it is the drugs talking and nothing Sherlock would ever say to her if he was in his right mind, she shifts emotional gears into irritation. “You’re supposed to be smarter than this!”

She reaches out, tucking her head against his shoulder and trying to force him to his knees, nearly falling backward in the process. He makes a small noise – pain? She spares a quick glance and sees his nose quivering. Oh, fantastic; he probably hates her body wash or shampoo or something and she's no doubt in for a sudden dissertation on how her taste in personal hygiene items is as atrocious as her taste in clothing.

Sherlock's hand shoots out as if to steady her, landing on her waist, then pulling back just as abruptly, a look of alarm in his eyes. What, he can't put his hand on her even though she's essentially been pressed up against him this whole time? She shrugs it off as Sherlock's aversion to being touched – she's noticed this about him, even if he's not quite to the level of OCD-break-out-the-sanitary-wipes-after-shaking-hands. His current state of mind certainly can't be helping.

She manages to roll up onto her feet, hauling him up with her. For a moment it seems as though he is trying to help, but judging by the way he weaves a bit, he is still too unsteady to be of use. She raises his arm and pulls her chest tight to his body, stumbles to her feet and hauls him with her. Then she is near-dragging him from the room, half-sobbing as she grinds out: “You have to stop doing this, you idiot! You aren’t the only one you hurt, you know!” Oh, she hadn't meant to give her feelings away like that, but she comforts herself with the knowledge that he is unlikely to remember much once he recovers. _If_ he recovers...no, she will not allow herself to think that way.

“Dear lady, I am sure that…”

“Dear lady?” she repeats, incredulous. “Where the hell did you get that from?” she demands as she props him in the bathroom doorway. Can she leave him there while she runs back to close the door to the flat? Doubtful. His eyes...no, she needs to get his attention before he slips back into unconsciousness again... “Molly, Doctor Hooper; I’ll even tolerate Miss Hooper when you’re really being a prat,” she says in her best lecturing voice, “but I’m not your 'dear lady!' Got it?”

He opens his mouth as if to answer her, then suddenly begins sliding down to the floor. Nope, definitely no time to do anything but grab him again. “Oh, no you don’t!” She manages to catch him before his knees hit the floor and continues pulling him into the bathroom, another surge of adrenaline reviving her flagging strength.

She gets him over to the bathtub; the edge collides with his knees as he turns and falls into it. Just in time she slips her hand between his head and the tiled wall, fingers automatically curling into his hair. Apparently even such dire straits as Sherlock currently faces aren't enough to keep her body from appreciating the silky smoothness of the curls between her fingers.

 _Looks like we both need a cold shower,_ she thinks, biting her lip to hold back the half-hysterical laugh she feels building at the absurdity of her body reacting so inappropriately to his nearness. She reaches out and turns on the cold water, hoping to shock him into awareness – his eyes have started to close again, his breathing is harsh and ragged – and herself into sanity. She needs to find a way to keep herself from reacting so strongly to him...and doubts she ever will.

When she looks down at him, he is looking right back at her, the sharpness of his gaze much closer to what she is used to. She knows she must look a mess, with her t-shirt soaking wet and hair plastered to her skin, but she can't bring herself to care. Once again the words spill out of her without any real thought behind them. “Don’t you ever do this to me again, Sherlock, I mean it. I’ll put up with a lot, but not this. You want to kill me? Make me have to find you like this again. I don’t ever ask much, but I deserve better than this.”

He blinks water from his eyes as they flicker downward for just a split second – is he checking her out, noticing the way her wet t-shirt clings to her chest? – then back up to meet her concerned gaze. The tears have stopped and the anger is washing out of her as he shows every sign of coming out of the drug-induced haze he's inflicted on himself.

She is stunned by his next words, carried on a deeply drawn breath, as if he is remembering how to breathe whilst simultaneously talking. And his eyes; she sees an unexpected warmth in them that no amount of cold water will ever be able to freeze out of her heart. “I’m sorry…Molly,” he says, with an odd pause before speaking her name. Then he does the unthinkable; he reaches up and touches her cheek with one hand and adds, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She knows it's wrong, so very, very wrong, but when he moves his head, tilting it up toward hers, she gives into the mad impulse that overtakes her and presses her lips to his. She is shocked when he returns the kiss, loses track of everything except the feel of their mouths pressed together. She reaches out to touch his face, to once again wind her fingers in his dark curls, when his head falls back on his neck and, in spite of her best efforts, passes out.

oOo

Sherlock awakens the next morning in a strange bed. Certainly not his own Montague Street flat; he has never once, even in the thrall of the worst boredom, ever even thought about decorating with the wretched, overly cheerful floral-and-cats motif he is surrounded by now. Curtains, bedclothes – sheets and pillowcases and duvet – even the fabric on the room’s single chair is the same pattern. Ugh. Even if he weren't already headachy and nauseous as he continued the long, slow comedown from his high, this room would be enough to bring such symptoms on.

Where the hell is he? A woman's room, no difficult deduction there, but what woman? What the hell happened to him last night? Where is he?

The sound of the bedroom door opening catches his attention; he peers blearily over to see...oh. Molly Hooper, the pathologist from St. Bart's. How has he landed in her bedroom? Yes, he discovered her address one day while perusing some private paperwork she'd carelessly left open on her desk – something boring to do with National Health, he vaguely recalls – and memorized it in case it ever turned out to be useful, but it's a far cry from learning an address and finding oneself waking up there.

“Sherlock?” Molly sounds hesitant, and he almost snaps out a comment about how yes, it's Sherlock, who else would it be, but it hardly seems worth the effort. Instead he just looks at her, waiting for her to say whatever it is she's come to say. “Are you...how do...did you sleep all right?”

She isn't stuttering, not quite, but her hesitant pauses are nearly as annoying. “Clearly I slept,” he snaps out. “The question is, why did I sleep _here_?”

She blinks at him, her brown eyes ( _amber_ , his mind supplies; he ignores it, her eyes are _brown_ , dammit) enormous and sad and although something inside him longs to let her comfort him as she clearly wants to, panic at the thought of such closeness wins out and all he does is clench his jaws and grind out: “Well, Molly? Surely I didn't just appear in your bed, the answer to all your dreams...”

He's gone too far that time, and it doesn't take the blaze of hurt or the flush of red on Molly's cheeks for him to realize it. However, he is Sherlock Holmes and he doesn't do apologies or backpedaling, so all he does is wait for the inevitable explosion.

It isn't long in coming; Molly finds her voice almost immediately, and although it’s shaking she doesn’t stutter, not once, as she lays into him. “No, Sherlock, you didn't just 'appear' in my bed. But you _did_ just appear on my doorstep and you _did_ collapse as soon as I opened the door, but you don't remember any of that, do you?” Her voice rises in pitch and it’s like broken glass to his fractured nerves but clearly she’s in no mood to be interrupted and he is, interestingly enough, in no mood to interrupt her. Shame, perhaps? He feels it so seldom he can't be sure, but he listens as she continues: “No, of course you don't because you were too bloody high to remember anything that happened last night! And then you have the nerve to act like _I'm_ the one in the wrong, like it's my fault for caring whether you live or die?” She takes a single step forward, and he finds himself shifting uncomfortably as she glares at him, eyes alight with a fire he's never seen there before. “No, Sherlock bloody Holmes, you don't get to do that, get all offensive and attack me when all I've done is try to help you!”

She falls silent, chest heaving, fists balled at her sides, and he understands that she is giving him time to respond to her words. To defend himself, to say something, possibly even apologize or tell her she's right.

Instead he groans and covers his eyes with the back of his arm as he collapses back on the pillows. “Yes, fine, Molly, you've been a dear lady to help me in my hour of need. Now call me a cab so I can return home and leave you and your monstrosity of a bedroom in peace.”

“No.”

He opens his eyes and sits back up so quickly his head spins, but he fixes his glare on Molly, trying to intimidate her into doing as he asked. When he opens his mouth to say something cutting, something that will drive her into doing what he wants simply to get rid of him, she cuts him off, arms folded across her chest, matching him glare for glare. “You need help, Sherlock,” she bites out. “ _Real_ help, not just me dumping you in the shower and force-feeding you biscuits at three in the morning to get your blood sugar back up. You've needed help for a, for a long time now, and if you don't get it, I'll...I'll do something drastic.”

The stutter has returned, but the sudden steel-rod spine she is exhibiting is still very unsettling – not to mention intriguing. Nevertheless, he narrows his eyes at her and asks in his most dangerous growl: “Such as?”

Her lips compress into a thin line as she says: “I'll tell DI Lestrade.”

That shuts him up for a full thirty seconds as he continues to stare at her, gauging her determination. What he sees unsettles him even more; Molly Hooper is not bluffing. If he doesn't get help – and not just pretend to do so, lie to her and continue on as he has been – then she will cut off the source of the work, the one thing that keeps his ever-buzzing mind focused and strong instead of darting off into a thousand, a million different directions at once the way it has his entire life.

The drugs have helped, settled his mind, helped him sleep, relax, push away the boredom, but he has known all along that they are at best a temporary fix...and one that he has clearly overused. He still has no memory of arriving at Molly's flat, let alone anything that happened once he arrived, although there is a vague memory or dream-fragment, a sense of dislocation he remembers feeling at some point. Worse, he has no clear memory of what exactly he'd taken to get him to such a state in the first place. The last twenty-four hours are almost a complete blank, and although he was trying to still his thoughts and find some short-term peace inside his own mind, that wasn't exactly the level of forgetfulness he'd been aiming for.

He knows he needs help; perhaps that's why his drug-affected brain subconsciously directed him here, to Molly Hooper's flat. She is always eager to help him, no matter how cutting or dismissive he is to her. Even last summer, the day Lestrade opened his big fat mouth and blabbed to her...even then she demonstrated her willingness to help him, rather than judging or condemning him.

Yes, he decides as he reluctantly agrees that perhaps he should seek help for his (temporary) addiction, it is because he subconsciously knows that Molly will help him that he came here. There is no other reason; certainly not sentiment. Just because she cares for him (ridiculous of her to do so; why does she, when clearly he is not and never will be capable of deserving her affections, let alone attempting to return them?) doesn’t mean anything. He is using her as he always does, because she is convenient, and there is _nothing_ more to it than that.

In the end he sends a text to Mycroft, loath though he is to ask his elder brother for help. Still, it’s better than dealing with Lestrade, better than the possibility of having the work taken away from him. Mycroft will judge and moralize, but in the end he will do as Sherlock demands and find someplace discreet and far from London in which to overcome this (temporary) setback.

The car arrives within minutes of Mycroft's response, which is a simple 'Yes' via message, which means his assistant – what is that woman's name, he never can remember – is the one sending it. Which also means, thankfully, that she will be the one accompanying him to his destination, not his brother.

He leaves the flat without bothering to say good-bye, feeling Molly's eyes on him the entire time. He has hurt her, he understands that, but there is nothing he can do about it. He has spent his entire life hurting people, allowing no one close enough to hurt him in return, and doesn’t know how to change.

Doesn’t even know if he _can_ change.

He enters the car and sits next to his brother’s PA, who is tapping away on her Blackberry as usual. As far as he’s concerned he may as well be alone in the car, and he defiantly tells himself that’s fine.

Alone protects him. Alone keeps him safe.


	4. A New Man In Her Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story time jumps quite a bit, in case you haven't already noticed, and that's quite deliberate. This is set during TGG and introduces Jim Moriarty into the mix. There will be a gap before the next chapter is posted because I have to fix some things with wickedwanton, but I hope it'll be worth the wait. Thanks to moonmama for her spectacular betaing efforts, and thanks to all my readers and followers and reviewers!

**A New Man In Her Life (March 2010)**

It is a fairly slow day and Molly is seeking something to keep her from going completely mad from boredom. Sherlock is not around to spread his usual chaos; there are no autopsies scheduled, and she's even, for once, caught up on the piles of paperwork the combination of death and bureaucracy inevitably generates.

In desperation she decides to inventory the storage cupboard down the hall, the one that sees the least use but is close enough that if she is needed in the lab no one will have to search for her very long.

She opens the door, then gives a huff of annoyance as she flicks the light switch back and forth; the bulb's gone again, third time this month. When will the maintenance crew finally replace the faulty switch and be done with it? She gropes for the penlight she's tucked away on the back of the shelf nearest the door for just such an emergency, then gives a squeal as someone comes up behind her and grabs her round the waist.

Panic rises but is quickly stifled when she hears Jim's low chuckle in her ear. “Surprise, luv!”

He gives her a quick peck on the cheek as she relaxes and cranes her head around to give him a frown of mock-annoyance. “Prat!”

They'd met when he came to do software upgrades on the Pathology Department's computers last month, discovered a mutual love of cats and coffee and the American television series 'Glee' and developed a friendship that has since altered into something more.

Something she has been starved for: affection, attention, and, with any luck, even physical intimacy. If, she grumbles to herself, Sherlock lets it happen, of course. Because he is the most effective cockblocker she's ever met, without ever seeming to do it on purpose.

Every time she starts to date someone, Sherlock finds some way to destroy the relationship. If he were a different man Molly would accuse him of deliberately sabotaging her, but she’s honest enough with herself to admit the truth: he has been right about the men she tried to date since meeting him. Every. Single. Time. The married one. The serial cheater. The one with the death fetish who only wanted to convince her to get naked on one of the cadaver slabs and let him pretend he was defiling a corpse.

Jim is different, she knows he is. He’s sweet and a bit goofy and good at his job and doesn't mind her career path but isn't weirdly fixated on it, either. They have gone on three dates; tonight when they meet for drinks at the Fox will be their fourth. He has already shyly referred to her as his girlfriend and she is happier than she has been in a long time.

Or so she tells herself. Constantly. Every time she wakes up from a dream of Sherlock – still with those intense grey eyes which for some unknown reason have never morphed into the blue-green of the real man – she reminds herself that he has never looked at her as more than a friend, if that much, and that, sadly, he likely never will.

She had hopes after his overdose two years previous, even though he'd been so awful to her when he woke up in her flat the next morning. She can hardly fault him for that; no one could wake up under such circumstances and be all smiles and rainbows. The important part is that he actually listened to her and got help, got himself cleaned up and has remained drug-free ever since. She retains a quiet pride in herself for standing up to him the one time it truly mattered, even if afterwards she reverted back to scurrying around to do his bidding at every turn – once he forgave her enough to allow her to assist him again, that is.

She didn't see him for weeks, presumably while he was in rehab, didn't even know he'd returned till one of her colleagues made some disparaging remark about 'that Holmes prick' being back from wherever he’d disappeared to. But when she tried to speak to him he'd given her an icy stare and walked away from her, which meant he was still angry at her for trying to help – no, more than that, for daring to care about him.

That had gone on for months, until spring of 2009. She'd given up on him ever wanting to work with her again when one morning, half-way through her early shift, he'd burst into the lab with DI Lestrade on his heels, demanding her assistance with a body as if he hadn't just subjected her to the silent treatment for six months.

Things gradually drifted back to the way they had been before his overdose, with him doing experiments and assisting DI Lestrade – and sometimes other officers, although none of them seem as comfortable with the eccentric genius, as she has taken to calling him, as Greg. Just as none of her work colleagues are able to stand him for more than minutes at a time. She's been accused of everything from low self-esteem to outright masochism when she tries to explain why she puts up with so much crap from him.

If it wasn't for the visions she'd had before meeting him (and the dreams that have never stopped), she might agree with those accusations. If it wasn't for the fact that she thinks she sees something in him that others don't – whether because of those dreams and visions or simply because she spends a great deal of time observing him and thinking about him – she might have given up on him long ago.

But he’s changed recently; he isn’t quite as harsh or dismissive as he used to be. She thinks it’s because he’s actually made a friend, someone Mike Stamford introduced him to, apparently, the same day she'd finally worked up the courage to ask Sherlock to have a coffee with her. Which request he'd entirely misunderstood as her asking him if he wanted her to bring him coffee – or else pretended to misunderstand. She pushes back that particular remembered hurt and concentrates on what she remembers about John Watson. She's seen him about, knows he's a doctor and seems to be able to put up with Sherlock enough to agree to be his flatmate. He writes a blog, which Molly follows faithfully, although she's a bit put out with him right now for writing something so unflattering about Sherlock in it – really, what difference does it make if the world revolves around the sun or vice versa?

Jim interrupts her rambling thoughts by pushing her deeper into the storage cupboard and tugging the door shut behind them before turning her in his arms and kissing her. “Jim!” she gasps when the kiss ends, scandalized and a bit excited – in a nervous, what-if-we-get-caught sort of way – by his boldness.

It’s pitch black in the tight confines of the storage cupboard, but he backs her into the shelves holding folded linens without bumping her into anything along the way, pressing his body against hers and capturing her lips for a deeper, hungrier kiss.

He is a damn good kisser, and it's been so long since she's had any sort of physical release – since anyone's touched her besides herself – that she gives into the mad impulse that seems to have overtaken her and allows him to snog her silly. It isn't until his hands start wandering beneath her lab coat that she pulls away and breathlessly asks him to stop. “Jim, wait, not here, we can't!”

At first it's as if he doesn't hear her; his lips have moved to her throat and his hands have tugged her blouse out of the top of her trousers. She squeaks out another protest as his fingertips skim across her bare flesh before pulling back. His breath is a bit harsh, but then, so is hers. For just a second she feels something like fear flash over her – what if he doesn't stop, what if he's another mistake after all – but then he speaks and her concerns melt away. “Sorry, luv, guess I got a bit carried away there,” he says in that lovely Irish lilt of his. Yes, his voice isn't a deep baritone; his hair is shorter and much straighter, and his eyes are darker, he's not as tall...and why, exactly, is she still mentally comparing this lovely man to the one who will never even try to kiss her, let alone take further liberties?

Liberties she might not have expected from Jim at this stage of their relationship, but she pushes down any doubts the way she always does, certain that they stem solely from her worries that Sherlock will find some way to ruin this for her, too. She ignores his track record as well; surely he's due to be wrong about one of her attempts at a relationship sometime – why not now?

“It's all right,” she reassures Jim, still feeling a bit uneasy in the dark, attributing it solely to the fact that she can't see anything but the thin line of light beneath the door. “I do have to get back to work, though,” she reminds him, rubbing his arm lightly to let him know she's not angry at him.

“Yeah, work, I know, me too,” he agrees, but he still isn't moving and Molly has a sense there is something else he wants to say, even without seeing the expression on his face. “Thing is, Molls, there was something I wanted to ask, if you don't mind...”

His voice trails off and she offers him an encouraging “Yes?”

“That detective chap you're always going on about, Sherlock Holmes? Is he coming in today?”

“I don't...I'm not 'always' going on about him,” she protests as her stomach tightens; she’d thought she’d been managing her infatuation with Sherlock better than that. “Am I?”

“No, course not, luv, it's just an expression,” he hastens to reassure her, easing the knot a bit. He squeezes her arm and she feels his lips brush against her cheek in apology. “I just was wondering...d'you think I could meet him? If he isn't busy, of course. You make him sound so fascinating!”

“He's a prat!” she blurts out, and Jim laughs. She's glad he can't see how red her cheeks must be at the moment.

“Oh, Molls, don't worry, there's nothing he can say or do to chase me off!” he says, answering her unspoken fears. Did she tell him about those others already? She can't remember specifically doing so but they've had any number of lengthy conversations over the past month and she supposes she could have let something slip without thinking. Sometimes she lets her mouth run ahead of her brain when she's with a chap she fancies and her nerves have gotten the best of her. Then he leans closer and she feels the word as much as hears it breathed against her ear. “Please?”

“If he comes in I'll let you know,” she finds herself telling him, although she had no intention of doing so when she opened her mouth. How has this happened? But when she tries to take the words back Jim laughs and cajoles her and presses soft kisses to her lips and she finds herself weakening.

oOo

Two hours later Molly Hooper is as furious as she's ever been in her life, although she isn't sure at whom – Sherlock, for throwing out such a devastating deduction on Jim, or Jim himself for just popping up when she specifically asked him not to come down, since Sherlock was in one of his moods and she would rather not have introduced them until things settled a bit.

When Jim leaves she lets Sherlock have it, assuring him that he's wrong, that she and Jim are together. Then he shows her the note Jim has slipped him – it's Jim's mobile number, she recognizes his handwriting and the number, it's programmed into her own mobile and she all but runs from the lab, leaving Sherlock and John Watson (whom she is less angry at now, to the point where she regrets being so petty as to pretend to forget his name when she'd introduced Jim to him) to do whatever the hell it is they're here to do.

_He can't be gay. He just can't_ , she tells herself as she makes her rapid way to her office. If he was, surely he wouldn't have been so, so _forward_ with her in the supply closet earlier? Wouldn't she have been able to tell, wouldn't something have felt off – mechanical, rehearsed, forced...?

With a stifled sob she realizes that yes, it _had_ felt off. Mechanical. Rehearsed.

Forced.

She just makes it to her office, shuts the door, pulls the shade and turns the lock before collapsing on the floor, crying her eyes out. Why does it always have to be this way? Why can't she just find a man to love, one who will love her back and not just use her? Because of _course_ that was what Jim was doing; of _course_ all he wanted was for her to introduce him to Sherlock so he could try and ask him out. Right under her bloody, stupid nose!

“Molly Hooper, you are the world's biggest fool,” she says aloud, wiping her nose on the back of her hand and not even caring how pathetic she must look. Not that anyone can see her – not that anyone who _could_ see her would care.

With shaking hands she pulls her mobile out of her pocket and sends Jim a text, then waits to see if he will answer.

_Why did you slip Sherlock your mobile number when we were in the lab?_

_Let it be for a case he's too shy to come out and ask about,_ she prays while she waits for an answering text – or a reassuring phone call, telling her it's all a misunderstanding...

Less than a minute later she receives a reply.

Not the one she'd been praying for.

_Oh. He told you about that. I hope you don't take it the wrong way; you know I love you right? I just want to screw him. This is the 21st century after all; never took you for a Victorian miss._

She stares incredulously at the lines of text, shakes her head, closes her eyes tightly, then opens them again, hoping that she's misread the message. But no, there it is in black and white: confirmation of Sherlock's assessment of her latest misfire of a relationship.

Jim is gay. Bisexual. Whatever. He has just admitted to wanting to have sex with Sherlock.

How can someone say they love you and in the next breath admit to wanting to have sex with someone else?

_Jim, I don’t think we want the same thing from this relationship. We should talk._

Her thumb hovers over the mobile for a long moment before she sends the message.

His response is instant – and exactly what she was afraid it would be.

_Sorry, Molls, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. I should have known you’d break up with me over this, but it was worth a shot. Oh well, it’s been fun. Toodles._

Molly shakes her head, closes her eyes, opens them, and reads the lines of text again. How can he be so flippant? How can he act as if this whole relationship meant nothing? Yes, it has only been three dates, but he seemed as eager to be with her as she had been to be with him.

That, of course, is the key phrase: _seemed_ to be. Jim wasn’t in it to be with her, he was just using her to get close to Sherlock. She tries to be kind, to attribute it to his shy nature and social ineptness, but every excuse falls flat and she quickly gives up trying.

Her hands are shaking even harder as she sends a third message, this time to Mike Stamford, telling him she's ill and leaving early. Then she grabs her things, wipes her face and ducks out, thankfully without running into anyone she knows well on her way out.

One day she'll get this dating thing right. Just because she's 31 years old and has yet to figure it out doesn't mean she never will.


	5. Surprise, Luv Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it has been an incredibly long time since I started this. My apologies for not updating sooner, but things happen. And one of those things is that I am currently not in contact with my cowriter who has other things going on in her life, so I have decided to finish this on my own. All the parts with Victorian Sherlock written by wickedwanton are still canon in this universe, but I have no idea when/if she'll be able to come back and update, so I'll be inserting bits and pieces from his POV into the narrative going forward.
> 
> At this point, Molly has met 'Jim from IT' and although Victorian!Sherlock knows who he is and witnessed her encounters with him, she and Modern!Sherlock still are in the dark.
> 
> Until now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for noncon in this chapter.

**Surprise, Luv (April 2010)**

Another night, another failed date. Molly sighs and drops her handbag and keys on the table by the door to her flat, hanging her coat neatly on the hook and toeing off her shoes before padding morosely into the kitchen. She pours herself a glass of wine, starts to sip, hesitates, places it on the counter and pulls out a small pint of ice cream instead. She grabs a spoon and chucks the lid into the bin; there is slightly less than half a container left and after the disaster that was tonight’s attempt at finding another man to distract her from her feelings for Sherlock, she knows she will finish it all. Double Mocha Chocolate Chip, her go-to flavour for times like this.

As she heads for the living room and the comfort of the sofa, Toby winds himself around her ankles, meowing hopefully. She sighs and turns back around, setting the ice cream on the counter next to the discarded glass of wine – temporarily discarded, as she knows she will want it before bed – and rummaging in the cabinet below the sink for one of his treats. He sniffs it when she offers it to him, then daintily takes it between his teeth and chews it up. Molly scratches him between the ears, tells him he’s a good boy, but refuses to give him another treat in spite of his obvious desire for her to do so. She smiles tiredly when he puts his nose in the air and marches away from her, tail high, looking as affronted as only a cat – or Sherlock Holmes – can manage, then once again takes up her ice cream and spoon and finally makes it to the sofa.

She turns on the telly and flips through the channels a few times before giving up and playing one of her queued shows. Even that seems pointless; nothing catches her fancy until she stops at the fiftieth anniversary Dr. Who specials she’s refused to delete. The one featuring her favourite Doctor – Tom Baker, lucky number four. She smiles as the opening credits for ‘The Pyramids of Mars’ are shown, and settles in for a few hours spent not thinking about what a mess her love life is and always has been.

The ice cream is gone well before the end of the episode, and she considers the pros and cons of running to the corner shop to restock before deciding that no, she’d much rather pause the show, put on some comfy clothes and try to lose herself in Whodom again. Even though it hasn’t really been working so far, she is determined to keep trying; watching Sarah Jane and the Doctor trying to deal with robot mummies is so much better than wondering how she continually manages to pick such losers for her rare attempts at dating. Or fantasizing about Sherlock and his absorbing steel grey eyes ( _no, dammit, blue-green, they’re only steel grey in her dreams!_ ) sweeping into her flat, taking her in his arms and snogging her senseless.

She banishes such thoughts by opening up the wine; by the time she’s finished the first glass she’s so tired she can barely keep her eyes open, but forces herself to get up and drag herself to bed rather than simply dozing on the sofa.

The overly busy bedroom linens she had when Sherlock was last in her flat (the only time he has ever been in her flat, to be accurate) are long gone; no more cats and overblown, fussy flowers for Molly Hooper. Even though his taste is clearly different to hers, his comments still stung, and she quickly found something just as girly but much more soothing to the eye, a combination of pink and green stripes alternating with tiny rows of darker pink roses (because she can't excise the floral pattern entirely, she loves flowers too much). The curtains still match the duvet but the cover on her vanity chair is a dark, plain green to match her sheets. She is pleased with the effect, so pleased that, two years later, she still hasn't changed it.

She falls into sleep like a man falling off a cliff, and has troubling dreams of near-drowning and waterfalls until something even more horrifying wakes her up.

**oOo**

He enters the building using the first of the two keys Molly is unaware he’s made copies of, allowing the door to shut firmly behind him. He heads up the main staircase, trailing his fingers along the ancient mahogany railing and humming lightly to himself. When he reaches her second-floor flat he pauses, running his eyes up and down the narrow hall, noting the lack of light emanating from beneath her locked door and the utter silence surrounding him. Molly's got the early shift tomorrow, although she is as yet unaware that she's going to miss it entirely if things go as he's planned. He smiles darkly; things _always_ go as he plans.

The upstairs neighbors are asleep by now if his employee has done his job properly, and the neighbor downstairs is a deaf old bitch who wouldn't hear a bomb unless it went off beneath her bed. Even if something does bring her tottering up the stairs to bother Molly as she sometimes does, he has plans in place.

Just as he has plans in place for anyone else that gets in his way. Such as a certain consulting detective and his pet doctor, with whom he has a later appointment at a certain swimming pool.

He's disappointed to open the door and discover that Molly's stupid cat is nowhere in sight; he’d looked forward to using the mangy beast as an object lesson. He notes that the sink is still full of the day’s dirty dishes, and tsks disapprovingly; she's normally so neat and orderly, what _ever_ could have led her to disrupt her nightly ritual and leave such a mess? Is it possible she just got sooo sleepy she could barely keep her eyes open and just _had_ to get to bed?

He smirks and strolls into the sitting room. My goodness, she's left a half-full bottle of red wine – her favorite vintage as he well knows, always important to make note of such things – and a dirty wineglass on her coffee table. Yes, Doctor Molly has, indeed, just gotten too sleepy to keep her eyes open, poor dear, and left a mess behind as she stumbled her way to bed. The drug his man added when she was at work earlier in the day appears to have done its job. She’ll be dead asleep for the night unless something happens to jog her back to consciousness.

His smirk broadens into a grin that threatens to turn to laughter, but he holds it in. Now isn't the time; not until he's made his way into her bedroom – and has reassured himself that the fucking cat is, indeed, nowhere to be found. Probably curled up on that back-breaker of a spare bed in the room Molly uses as an office.

He cracks his knuckles and dismisses the cat from his mind, looking forward to the night’s agenda, of which Molly Hooper is only the appetizer. Sherlock Holmes, of course, is now and always has been the main course.

He'd wondered with a thrill of anticipation how long it would take the self-styled ‘consulting detective’ to see through the banal face of 'Jim from IT' to the monster lurking beneath the skin. Sadly, it appeared he would have to be the one to make the reveal, but that was fine, too, all part of the game. And now was the time for Molly’s final appearance on the board. He’d used her to glean a few nuggets of information about his adversary, but the real reason he’d even bothered was because she was one of the few people Sherlock seemed to regard as something close to a friend.

That had been a month ago. He glances around, noting that nothing much has changed in Molly’s flat in the interim. But then, a month isn’t all that long, and not all women change up their home décor after breaking things off with their supposedly gay boyfriends.

The smirk returns at the thought. Molly had been so pathetically easy to manipulate, to use to get closer to Sherlock and give the supposed genius a chance to discover his true identity, to figure things out, to prove himself cleverer than Jim himself. A disappointment all round, that encounter had proven, although he had learned that Sherlock had very expensive taste in cologne – and had the opportunity to listen to his underbreath deduction of 'Jim from IT' and then attempt to cover it up. Pretending not to be chasing off yet another one of Molly's suitors even though the man clearly has absolutely no idea what to do with her.

He recalled listening outside the door of the lab as Molly defended their relationship, for once in her life standing up for herself and telling Sherlock off. It is the only time she’s managed to impress him – well, that and the fact the she is a truly talented kisser. Although he refuses to categorize himself as to sexual orientation, he enjoys a good snog and Molly definitely knows how to deliver in that area.

He wonders if he will kiss Molly tonight, as he ghosts his way into her bedroom, noting the continued absence of her bloody cat. Good. He won't have to waste time breaking its neck, although the sight of him doing so would undoubtedly show Molly just how serious he is when he threatens her.

Oh, and he _will_ threaten her, he thinks as he silently closes the door behind him and regards his sleeping prey, a cold smile growing on his lips. One that finally reaches his eyes, although it does nothing to warm them, only spreads the chill. There will be threats and she will believe them or pay the consequences, consequences far beyond the play time they will share tonight.

He is still unsure why he’s changed his mind and come here tonight to terrorize the little mouse. Originally he had no plans to have anything more to do with Doctor Molly Hooper, Pathologist and Nominee for Second Most Obsessed-by-Sherlock-Holmes Person on the Bloody Planet.

That, he thinks, must be the answer. He will tolerate no rivals, even in this sort of imaginary competition; Sherlock is _his_ to play with, even if he finishes the game tonight, as he plans to. Torturing Molly, whispering to her that Sherlock will never want her...it’s simply his way of ensuring that her memories of the man she could never have are tainted.

Besides, she deleted his messages and images and even his number from her mobile after he manipulated her into breaking up with him, trying to erase him from her life, and Jim Moriarty will _not_ be erased by anyone.

He wants her to know, he decides as he slips his jacket off his shoulders and hangs it neatly on the back of her vanity chair, that Sherlock Holmes is the reason Jim Moriarty has decided to pay her a very special visit, to dirty his own hands and make sure that Molly fucking Hooper learns her true place in the world.

He toes his shoes off his feet, moving close to the bed so he can watch Molly in the faint moonlight coming through her room's single window. She is wearing only an oversized man's t-shirt with some indistinguishable logo on her chest for pyjamas, and has kicked the covers off, revealing her legs and a few tantalizing glimpses of her knickers. They are as lacy and impractical as her work clothes are boring and ill-fitting. Molly Hooper, a woman of many contrasts.

A woman who stirs and mumbles a bit, but does not quite wake up as he slides into bed next to her, clutching his switchblade in one hand,. Oh, he's timed his arrival impeccably; in a few more minutes enough of the drug will have cleared her system to allow her to awaken. She might even wake up before he’s ready for her...delicious, the thought of her struggling beneath him as he holds his blade to her throat...

He carefully straightens the twisted covers, folding them down over the foot of the bed and out of the way. She's opted for queen sized, although it dwarfs her small bedroom, and he hums in approval at the firmness of her mattress. No backaches for Doctor Molly; she’s a woman who values a good night's sleep.

Too bad he aims to ruin that for her, at least for tonight. Quite possibly forever.

He shuts his eyes and hums delightedly at the rush of heady pleasure that comes over him as he contemplates the sheer number of options he has. He can tie her up, gag her, blindfold her; he can beat her, mark her, permanently or temporarily; he can use his knife, cut pretty patterns in her pale, freckled skin, make her bleed, rape her...so many, many things he can do to her. It’s almost a pity he has another appointment; there’s barely enough time to put the fear of God into her – well, the fear of Jim Moriarty, which is even more potent. He could just let it go, let her find out by watching the news what sort of a monster she let herself get close to, but he wants to see the look in her eyes when she discovers exactly how dangerous he is.

She sighs in her sleep, rolls fully onto her back, arms raised up by her head, legs slightly parted...and he knows exactly how to get her attention.

“I hope you're dreaming about him, luv,” he whispers before kneeling between her thighs, easing them further apart, flicking open his switchblade and making two swift, sharp cuts to her knickers. When she has been laid bare to him, he leans over the side of the bed and shoves the blade between the mattress and box spring – handle out, easy to reach if necessary – eases his way further down towards the foot of the bed...and slowly, carefully, presses his mouth to Molly's sex.

**oOo**

Molly moans, her body squirming, the dream of waterfalls and Swiss Alps abruptly transforming into a sexual fantasy involving Sherlock's mouth on a very sensitive part of her body, his tongue lapping at her, his fingers holding her open. Then he slips a single digit inside her and she moans even louder, tilting her hips to give him better access, to guide him to where she needs him to be as her fingers clutch the pillow beneath her head, desperately holding onto the slippery fabric, her heels digging into the mattress as she feels that familiar tension building in her belly; her heart pounding, her breaths coming in panting gasps as she moans out his name, _Sherlock, God, yes, more, harder, please..._

The climax comes over her so suddenly and with such force that it takes her a long minute to come fully awake, feeling sated and confused, fulfilled and utterly baffled. She's had dreams like this her entire adult life, but has never actually had an orgasm without having to manually finish off the job herself after waking up.

She blinks and stares blankly at the ceiling to her bedroom, stretching a bit to ease her almost-cramping thighs...

...then cries out as a figure suddenly looms over her.

“Surprise, luv,” Jim breathes into her ear as she feels the cold kiss of a steel blade caressing her throat. “Did you miss me?”


	6. Surprise, Luv Part 2

**Surprise, Luv Part 2 (April 2010)**

Molly's shock and confusion are delicious, the way she gapes at him, the sound of her indrawn breath as she realizes she's not alone... _oh yessss_ , he thinks. Absolutely delicious. And when he speaks – the moment she recognizes his voice, the way her eyes widen even further in the dim lighting...even better.

Still holding the blade tightly against her throat, he leans down and presses a kiss to her mouth, forcing his tongue between her lips so she can taste herself, knowing that she's just come for a man she did not invite into her bed, didn't even know was there as she dreamed her dreams of Sherlock – oh yes, he'd heard the other man's name as she sighed and arched her back and pressed her cunt against his mouth – he is enjoying it all. The taste of her, the scent of her arousal and now her fear, the lines of sweat that have broken over her forehead...manna from heaven, if he believed in such a place.

He rests his head on her shoulder and squirms his right arm beneath her pillow, reaching up to take her hair in his hand, holding it firmly right at the nape of her neck, forcing her to arch it back just the slightest bit. The movement causes the blade in his hand to nick her throat and she gasps and stiffens in his hold. “Just letting you know I don't fuck around when it comes to threats, luv,” he murmurs. “I will slit your throat if you scream, do you understand me?”

He eases his grip enough for her to nod in response, a quick, terrified movement. “Good girl,” he breathes, raising his head and licking her ear and neck. She shudders, and he feigns disappointment. “Oh, Molly, what's wrong? I thought we were having so much fun. Or are you one of those girls who only gets off when a fellow goes down on her, is that it? Shall I do it again, put my mouth on your pussy and make you come again?”

“N-no,” she manages to choke out, and he chuckles.

“Can you guess why I'm here, Molly?” he asks. “Shall I give you a hint?” He licks her ear again, delighting in the shudder that goes over her body at the sensation of his tongue on her sensitive skin.

“Jim, please,” she whimpers, and he smiles, pleased by her reaction. “Why are you doing this? I thought you weren't, weren't interested in m-me.”

He loves it when she stammers. It is the first time he has heard her do so when not in the presence of the God-like Sherlock Holmes at whose feet she worships. Not that she is aware that Jim has overheard any of her interactions with the consulting detective, but then, the software he installed on her work computer and personal laptop is meant to be undetectable. Nice to know he hasn't wasted his money on the state-of-the-art – and highly illegal – surveillance package.

He intends to make her stammer even more, as well as beg and cry. It's a bit of surprise that she hasn't already started crying; he can practically hear the tears clogging her throat, but none have fallen from her eyes as of yet. An unexpected strength he looks forward to breaking.

“Molly, we’re going to have a little chat, you and I, one that won’t involve any sort of loud, attention-getting noises. Do you know what’ll happen if you do make any loud, attention-getting noises, hmm?” he asks her, speaking in a normal tone of voice, no more intimate little whispers, all brisk and business-like, not unlike a certain consulting detective they both wish was in the room at the moment - although for entirely different reasons.

From where he’s holding her hair at the nape of her neck, he feels her swallow before answering, the forced calm in her voice surprising him yet again. Hmm, twice in one encounter; perhaps he needs to revise his opinion of her upwards a bit. “You’ll k-kill me.”

He gives a little chuckle and kisses the tip of her nose in reward for her show of bravery. “Well, yes, I will,” he agrees. “But do you know what else will happen?”

“No,” she whispers, and he happily explains.

“If you scream, you won’t be the only person who gets hurt. That charming family upstairs, for starters, and perhaps the old twat who lives downstairs. I'll bet you wouldn't like that, would you.”

When she remains silent, he pulls her hair sharply, eliciting a sharp cry from her lips that he silences by raising his head and pressing his mouth against hers again. He uses his full weight to press her down into the pillow, until he can feel her gasping for breath. Only then does he relent, leaning back, the knife never moving from its position directly above her carotid artery. “I said,” he growls, eyes slitted with anger, “you wouldn't like that. Would you.”

“N-no,” she says, finally responding to her cue. “Please, don't hurt them. I promise, I'll do whatever you tell me to do.”

“Good!” he exclaims, sitting up, pulling his arm from beneath her pillow – but not releasing his grasp on her neck, forcing her to rise with him. The whites of her eyes are gleaming in the faint ambient light and she’s breathing hard as she faces him. It occurs to him just how it easy it would be end her life - not with the knife he’s brought, but by truly dirtying his hands in a way he rarely does. He can picture his hands around her throat, squeezing hard, and before he realizes it imagination has become reality. He’s tossed the knife across the room and he stares down at Molly’s face as he squeezes; she's turning a lovely shade of red that will soon turn purple, then a nice dark aubergine shading into black. Her tongue will protrude, her eyes will bug out… “So, so easy,” he whispers.

As he does, he feels a buzzing in the back of his mind, almost a voice whispering just below his ability to clearly hear. He ignores it, focusing on the task at hand, and chortles at his own clever word-play. Her face starts to darken and her desperate movements slow to a stop until she goes limp. He thinks it’s a pity she won’t leave a good-looking corpse, but then, no one ever does. It’s even more of a pity that Sherlock won't be alive to find her dead body...

With that thought, he flinches, one hand reaching up to brush at his ear as the sensation of someone screaming at him shudders its way over his mind and body. His other hand springs from her throat as if wrenched away by some invisible presence and all at once he remembers the larger picture; if he's going to kill Sherlock, then Molly has to live. She has to be alive to discover that the man she loves in her pathetic little way is dead, that she'll never have a chance to get him to notice her the way she wants him to.

That she'll never have him at all.

She needs to live and suffer. Almost, almost he thinks he hears another voice whispering that thought into his mind, but he shrugs it away as he lifts himself up from where he’s been straddling her. She’s regaining full consciousness, coughing and wheezing now that her airflow is no longer constricted. Damn, he hadn't meant to leave marks on her, but it won't matter. She's going to call out sick from work tomorrow – no, he judges as he rises to his feet and absentmindedly straightens his cuffs, she'll call out for the rest of the week. Not just to hide her injuries, but also out of grief once she discovers that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are dead, dead, dead.

He leaves her on the bed, coughing and gasping, and pauses in front of her dresser mirror, leaning close to straighten his tie and smooth his hair. His satisfied smiles turns to a puzzled frown; he leans even closer and raises one hand to the smooth glass as he thinks he sees...something. For just a second his reflection seems to have morphed into Sherlock’s furious face, his fists raised in an ineffectual attempt to smash through the barrier that separates their realities...and then the moment passes, and he laughs quietly to himself and turns away

“Toodles, Molls,” he says as he strolls to her bedroom door. “It’s been fun, but just remember - one word to anyone about my visit and your neighbors will suffer. Oh, and you might want to call out at work for the next few days, give those nasty bruises time to heal. Wouldn’t want anyone wondering how you got them, after all. Ta-ta!”

Then he’s gone, leaving the door open behind him, pausing only to scoop up the bottle of wine and Molly’s half-empty glass. He dumps the latter down the sink and carefully rinses it out before smashing it to pieces on her kitchen lino. The bottle he brings with him, and he hums quietly to himself as he lets himself out.

It’s been fun, but he has a more pressing appointment this evening.

Time to kill two annoying birds with one semtex stone.

**oOo**

_He witnesses the entire, horrific incident, unable to do more than watch and, although he would never admit such a truth aloud, pray as James Moriarty attacks Molly in her own home. He’d hoped the mirror would show him one of its rare glimpses into her life when he lifted the cover from it this evening, but this...never would he have expected to confront such horrors._

_The scene appears as if through a fog, and he hears this future incarnation of his enemy asking Molly if she missed him. The edges sharpen and come into focus, although it’s still dark, and it takes him a second to realize that’s because it’s night-time, that Molly had gone to bed when the intruder entered her rooms._

_He tenses when he sees the flash of the blade in the other man’s hand, and slaps his own hands fruitlessly against the cheval glass at the clear threat the weapon holds. He feels only a moment’s relief when Moriarty tosses the knife to one side and straddles Molly’s body, relief that morphs instantly to terror when the man wraps his hands around her throat and starts to choke her._

_He nearly faints with relief when the Moriarty of her time - Jim from ‘it’, as she’s called him, although he hasn’t the faintest idea what ‘it’ means - releases her just short of choking her to death. He stares with hatred burning in his heart as the other man peers into the mirror, preening at his own reflection, and Sherlock knows he would give almost anything to be able to reach through that glass and wrap his own hands around Moriarty’s neck._

_After Moriarty leaves Molly sits up shakily, her hand prodding at what are surely massive bruises on her throat. She appears to be listening intently, and they both breathe silent sighs of relief at the sound of a door closing in the distance. Moriarty has gone, at least for now. She raises something in her hand, something that brings a flash of light across her features (her small telephonic device, his mind supplies), and his heart clenches in his chest at the sight. She looks so fragile, so desperately unhappy, that he longs to take her in his arms and soothe her hurts, to make a vow that she’ll never face such danger again._

_Futile hopes, which he quickly represses. Useless sentimentalism will neither defeat their mutual nemesis nor allow him to discover the means by which to communicate directly with her. He needs to focus on the details, to retain them for future analysis. He deduces that she is deciding whether or not to use her telephonic device to summon aid, or whether to take Moriarty’s threats seriously and do nothing._

_In the end, that is exactly what she does. With a sigh, she lays the device back on her bedside table and staggers to her feet, coughing feebly as she follows the path Moriarty took only moments earlier. She pauses at her bedroom door, listening intently, a precaution which he heartily approves. After a moment he sees her tension ease a bit; apparently satisfied that the madman has left her, she steps out of the room and out of his sight, presumably to apply medication to her injured throat._

_With that, the scene fades and the mirror’s surface once again reflects only his own haggard face and form, standing in his cluttered sitting room. He closes his eyes briefly and allows his head to fall forward till it touches the glass, which he holds in place with one outstretched hand. He silently both thanks and curses Charlotte for sending it to him. Their journey into the realm where dreams and reality meet has apparently given him a sensitivity heretofore unknown to him._

_He wonders what James would think if he were to discover that his interest in spiritualism has nothing to do with a case - and wonders again if he should try to explain to the other man about the strange turn his life has taken. He shakes his head and covers the mirror; no, James is far too much the pragmatist to believe, without the evidence of his own eyes, in the strange and murky world Sherlock Holmes has been made aware of. A world that never would have come to his attention, it would seem, had Margaret Hooper not perished in a fire._

_Still, Fate or whatever name one chose to give it had at least offered him this chance, slim though it might be, to be of some aid to the version of Margaret born into the latter part of the twentieth century. The one destined, he believes, to find her own happiness with his future self, should that self-absorbed prat ever learn to look beyond his own needs and discover the wealth of love that awaits the opening of his eyes and heart._

_And all that needs to be done is find a way to warn them both that Molly is in danger from a madman who has found a way to span the Great Divide between life and death. A madman who continues to plague them all from beyond the grave._

_“Moriarty,” he whispers, hands clenching into fists._

_He will find a way to stop him, no matter what the personal cost._


	7. Don't Speak

**Don't Speak (Christmas 2010)**

She never says a word about that night in her flat, not even after she finds out about John and Sherlock at the swimming pool. It’s all over the news, but she at least can be grateful that Sherlock actually texted her that night, so she doesn’t have to learn about it second-hand. His text is curt, giving only the bare details and warning her to tell him if she hears from ‘Jim from IT’ ever again.

Of course she doesn’t; he’s made his point and she’s careful to say nothing of his visit to her, not then, not ever. After hearing about John and the Semtex vest he was forced to wear, she understands even more clearly just how dangerous James Moriarty really is.

Months pass and life continues much as normal, with the one exception that she neither dreams nor has waking visions of the grey-eyed version of Sherlock. Not until she’s home alone after a certain Christmas season holiday party she’s been invited to...and has decidedly mixed feelings about.

**oOo**

_A sound catches his ear, almost an echo? He pauses in the midst of the Haydn violin sonata he’s been playing, but hears nothing. As soon as he raises the bow, however, the sound is repeated: someone else is playing the violin, but above that he can hear the murmur of voices - and it’s all coming from directly behind him._

_Laying his Strad and its bow carefully on his chair, he crosses the room and pulls the cover from the Cheval glass. It’s been silent, reflecting nothing but himself and his sitting room for weeks now, and he’s eager to catch another glimpse of Molly - eager and nervous, bracing himself for more mischief from Moriarty’s future self._

_He relaxes only fractionally when the scene that greets his eyes proves to be some sort of Christmas gathering in progress, although it’s many months until the festive season in his own time. As he scans the room he makes note of some familiar faces: Mrs. Hudson, sipping from a wine glass with her hair cut remarkably short; Detective Inspector Lestrade, looking startlingly grey-haired (but refreshingly mutton-chop free); James - or rather, John - Watson wearing an outlandish knitted garment whilst seated in an armchair. There is an unfamiliar woman resting sitting vulgarly on the floor between his legs...and there, across the room, is his future self._

_Sherlock bites back a sigh of aggravation. Of_ course _his future self would detest the holidays as much as he himself does, as made evident by the way he keeps himself apart from the others, his back to them as he lays down his violin in order to trifle with some incomprehensible futuristic contraption instead._ At least I know enough to pay proper attention to guests in my home, however unwanted, _he thinks to himself with a disdainful sniff._

_A noise at the door catches everyone’s attention, and he feels his heart beating faster as he recognizes Molly’s voice calling a cheerful greeting. She is clad in an oversized winter coat and holds a paper bag by its handles in one hand. Judging by the gaily wrapped gift sitting atop the bag, the remainder of the contents can easily be deduced as presents for the people gathered here. Also judging by the way she’s greeted by John Watson, this is the flat he and Sherlock share, and is therefore Baker Street._

_He spares a moment to review the room’s outlines, and finds that yes, it does indeed resemble his own sitting room, including the placement of much of the furnishings. But none of that matters, not when Molly is smiling as she places the bag on the floor and begins to remove her coat._

_The expression on John and Lestrade’s faces surely mirrors that of his own: jaws dropped, eyes wide at the exquisite sight that greets them. Molly is wearing a dress, for the first time since he’s starting seeing her in either his visions or through the Cheval glass, and what a dress it is! He already knows how radically different fashions have become in this future time, but to see how much flesh is revealed as Molly removes her coat is a revelation in more than one way. He drinks in the sight of her small, perfect breasts, outlined by the silky black material of her gown; her shoulders and much of her décolletage are revealed to his appreciative eyes, although he admits to a certain amount of jealousy that other men are seeing her thus. There are two sets of straps over her shoulders, both black, the under-pair perhaps attached to an undergarment of some sort? He knows from his previous body-swap with his future self that she wears no stays when in her own home, but perhaps that is only true in such circumstances._

_He has no time to do more than wonder and admire as his future self finally turns and takes in the sight of her. Sherlock bristles when that...utter prat dismisses her appearance. He seems even more out of sorts than usual, possibly due to the holidays, possibly due to a case, impossible to discern as Sherlock’s choler rises at his future self’s words. “Miss Hooper has love on her mind,” he sneers, and only an utter fool could fail to recognize that the object of her adoration is no hypothetical other man, but rather, his own unworthy self._

_Unfortunately for Molly, his future self is, indeed, an utter fool._

_His hands curl into fists as the prat continues to speak, his tone condescending, his gaze near-contemptuous. Never has Sherlock wanted to pound another person who has yet to commit a criminal act. Of course, the prat’s words are a crime against the lovely woman who stands so bravely in front of him, her eyes large with hurt, her mouth set but not trembling. He admires her all the more for not bursting into tears as his future self tears her to pieces in front of a roomful of other guests; has the man no sense of propriety, of proper behaviour, at all?_

_“Look at the tag on the gift, you fool,” he urges aloud, even knowing his other self cannot hear him. However the blue-green eyes do drift downward and he finally - finally! - stops talking, clearly at a loss as he sees the name. Even though he cannot see the tag himself, even though that other version of him doesn’t speak the name aloud, Sherlock knows exactly for whom the gift is meant._

_And the prat finally does something to redeem himself, although in Sherlock’s mind it is too little, too late: he apologizes. Aloud, in front of witnesses. “I am sorry. Forgive me.” Then he steps forward and presses a brief kiss to Molly’s cheek. “Merry Christmas, Molly Hooper.”_

_His telephonic device - a ‘mobile’ he believes it’s called - interrupts the moment with an obscene approximation of a feminine moan - one that raises the hairs on the back of Sherlock’s neck as he recognizes it. The Woman apparently exists in this future as well. Molly stammers out a protest, ‘her’ Sherlock makes a dismissive comment, and then he leaves them, taking the mobile device with him._

_Leaving Molly and the others to try to comprehend all that has just happened. There is awkward silence, then equally awkward conversation before Molly hands out the gifts she’s brought with her, takes another sip of her wine, makes her excuses and leaves._

_As she exits the flat the vision fades, but he calls after her nonetheless: “He’s a fool, Molly Hooper. He doesn’t deserve you.”_

_She pauses in the doorway, as if she might have heard him, then shrugs and exits, the mirror returning to its proper state, reflecting his own unhappy features back to him._

_He is no nearer to a solution as to how he might save Molly from Moriarty, but he does know this much: his future self has far too little regard for the treasure that could be within his grasp, should he just reach out and accept what is being offered._


	8. Goodbye Girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to broomclosetkink for reading this over and making some very valuable suggestions.

**Goodbye Girl (June 2011 – One Week After The Fall)**

It’s finally time, the moment Molly has been dreading. Sherlock’s healed enough to leave her flat, just in time, she wryly notes, to attend his own funeral if he so desires.

Although she’s at least half-joking when she says the words, she can tell by the expression on his face that she’s caught him, and she sighs. “Honestly, Sherlock, do you think that’s a good idea? What if someone sees you?”

He shrugs, but she can tell he isn’t as indifferent as he pretends to be. “People see what they expect to see, Molly. Except you,” he adds softly, unexpectedly. “You see what other people miss. I hope you understand what a rare gift that is.”

She knows he’s referring to their shared moments before the fall, when she had peeled back the layers and seen the fear and vulnerability of the great Sherlock Holmes. When he’d told that she counted and that he’d always trusted her.

Even now, two weeks later, his words continue to warm her heart - but at the same time, they fill her with an inexplicable sense of guilt. Well, perhaps not so inexplicable. She suspects it’s because she’s never told him the truth of how she first saw him: not with her eyes but as a vision reflected in a mirror. She’s started to tell him, many times, only to find herself holding back, changing her mind, masking her unease behind her usual verbal clumsiness around him. Still, it feels as if she is hiding a secret from him, and wants very much to share the truth with him, even if, she suspects, he won’t believe her.

However, once again when she tries to tell him about those tantalizing flashes of his own face and form, so much a phantom of her imagination and yet so very, very real...she can’t. Why? Why can’t she bring herself to tell him about them, even now, when he is about to embark on a very dangerous phase of his ‘life after death?’

Does it, she wonders with a twinge of a different kind of guilt, have something to do with the feeling that she was somehow being unfaithful to his reflected self when they’d kissed in the morgue?

She finds herself unwillingly reliving that night, in bits and pieces, fragments of the beginning of the end of Sherlock Holmes...

_“You're right. I'm not okay...Molly, I think I'm going to die.”_

_“What do you need?”_

_“You.”_

_She tells him he can have her, but this time she doesn't flush and stammer and try to correct herself. She just looks at him, knowing she looks as raw and vulnerable as he does in this moment. He's moved closer, so much closer, so close that it will take very little effort on her part to reach out to him, to cup her hand on his cheek, to raise herself on tiptoes and press her lips against his._

_And when she does those things, when she feels his own lips meeting hers, hesitant at first but suddenly clinging to hers with a sort of quiet desperation, she is stunned to feel the tide of guilt flowing over her, nearly drowning her._

_She breaks the kiss off with a gasp, nearly apologizes but doesn't, just watches him silently, waiting to see how he reacts._

_He takes a moment longer to speak than she expects, and she wonders if she's managed to surprise him again, or if he expected this reaction from her when he came to see her._

_He clears his throat. Takes a step back._

_Begins explaining what he needs her to do to help him foil Moriarty's plans for him._

_Says not a word about the kiss from that moment until now._

She pushes her lingering confusion and guilt aside, tamping down on her recollections of that night. The memories of another night, far more disturbing and painful, try to intrude, but she has no problem shoving them aside as well. Jim Moriarty is dead; he can't hurt her any longer, and confessing what he'd done to her now will do no good, even if the threat he’s held over her head for so long has ended.

Besides, there's another confession she needs to make, before Sherlock puts himself in harm's way. Before he leaves her to take down whatever is left of Moriarty’s criminal network after he blew his brains out on the roof of St. Bart’s. It's now or never.

Sherlock must already know how she feels about him; how can he not? He might not have incorrectly deduced why she’d gone to so much care with her appearance and his gift that one horrible Christmas Eve, but once he’d understood, he’d apologized. She imagines she can still feel a tingle in her cheek whenever she thinks about the kiss he’d planted there. Just as she has never forgotten their first shared kiss, when he was so high that he has never remembered it – or if he has, he has never mentioned it or referenced it in any way.

It is just another facet of the elephant in the room, and that elephant _has_ to be addressed. It has to be acknowledged, brought in the open, and put to rest one way or another. With that in mind, she watches as he closes her laptop, the one she’d surrendered for his use without a murmur, waiting for him to rise to his feet and face her before opening her mouth.

His finger on her lips shuts her up as effectively as if she’d been gagged. “Molly,” he says, his voice and expression solemn, “please. Don’t. I already know, and I don’t want you to…you need to understand,” he rushes out, suddenly sounding a bit desperate and lost. “When we kissed...you do know I hold you in the highest regard, that I care for you as much as I do John and Mrs. Hudson, but it can never be anything more than that. Especially not now, under these circumstances.” When he might be going off to die for real, is the unstated meaning. “Please tell me you understand.” His expression softens a bit as he adds: “If I were capable of being who you wanted me to be, believe me, I would not hesitate to become that man. But I can’t. I’m sorry.”

She nods, swallowing down the lump in her throat, feeling the tears gathering in her eyes. “I understand,” she manages to say, even lets her lips turn up in a sad smile. “But I hope you understand…I can’t change how I, how I f-feel.”

He leans forward and presses a tender kiss to her forehead, enfolding her in his arms in an embrace that promises nothing but a moment’s comfort, friendship and understanding – but not the love she yearns for. Her own arms clutch him desperately as her eyes close and the tears start to flow. Not just tears for his gentle yet thorough destruction of all her unspoken hopes and dreams, but for the man himself. He’s survived Moriarty’s plot, but they both know he might not survive what is yet to come.

“Goodbye, Molly,” he says softly, breaking the embrace and wiping the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “Try not to worry too much. And remember, you have nothing to feel guilty about for lying to everyone; you’re doing as much to keep them alive as I did by jumping off that roof.”

Then he is gone, slipping through her flat’s door, closing it softly behind him as she crumples to the floor and falls completely apart.

**oOo**

_There are times when he wonders how any descendant of his, spiritual or physical, could possibly be this obtuse. “The man is an utter ass,” he mutters to himself as watches Molly sob her heart out. Oh how he longs to reach through the glass, to comfort her, but it seems he spends a great deal of his time wishing for the ability to do so these days. James is concerned about how obsessed he is with the Cheval glass, but he cannot explain it to him in any manner that his utterly prosaic mind might be able to comprehend._

_Besides, he has his own situation to sort out; he and Nurse Smith are in the midst of planning their quiet wedding, which Mycroft of all people has volunteered to officiate. Sherlock will be there, as he and James’ fiancee have reached something of an understanding. Miss Mary Smith, he muses, would undoubtedly have much in common with Molly Hooper, were chance ever to allow the two to meet, and that knowledge has aided in his mellowing toward the soon-to-be second Mrs. Watson._

_Another hiccuping sob from Molly brings his attention back to...not the present, certainly, but to the moment in time he’s been privy - or cursed - to witness. It seems the glass prefers to show him moments of high emotion, and he makes a mental note to ask Charlotte about it when next they meet. “He’s a fool, Molly” he says, speaking directly to a woman who cannot hear him. She pulls herself to her knees as he watches, scrubbing at her eyes like an over-tired child, the occasional sob still issuing from her throat. “Tea with honey and lemon,” he murmurs, “to soothe your throat. And a warm cloth to cover your eyes; such a suffusion of emotion is likely to bring on the migraine if you’re not careful.”_

_He watches tenderly as she eventually stumbles to her feet, staring around blankly and standing quite still, as if unsure of what to do with herself._

_His fingertips touch the glass, and an oath is startled out of him as the surface rebounds as if made of India rubber. He presses harder, and the glass gains the consistency of hardened gelatin. As his fingertips seem impossibly to sink into this spongy surface, he feels a sort of tingling numbness, a slight burn, and instinct quickly causes him to retract his hand. He stares at the glass, seeing only his reflection; Molly has vanished, but the tingle and slight burn on his fingertips remain._

_Conflicting emotions stir in his breast: disappointment at having lost sight of Molly, the usual gnawing worry for her safety that never leaves him, and excitement over the alteration he just witnessed. After an irresolute moment, rests his left hand on the glass, only to find it back to its usual smooth consistency. “Fascinating,” he murmurs as he hurries to his kitchen laboratory and pulls out his magnifying glass, the better to examine the affected digits of his right hand. They are red and look very much as if they have been burnt under scalding water, although the discomfort he feels is mild in comparison to what the evidence of his eyes tells him he should be experiencing._

_Humming to himself, he spends the next several hours concocting experiment after experiment on both his fingers and the mirror, until finally exhaustion overcomes him and he falls asleep whilst seated at his microscope. Mrs. Hudson finds him that way in the early hours of the morning and tuts over him until he stumbles to his bed. She acknowledges his imperious command not to touch a single thing in his rooms as he is in the middle of an important experiment._

_“Aren’t you always,” she grumbles, but leaves him to his rest. He hears the door shut behind her and falls instantly back to sleep, but it is a sleep haunted by dreams that will stay with him for days. Especially one particular dream..._


	9. Dangerous Visions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to broomclosetkink, as always, for being an awesome beta/second pair of eyes for me.

**Dangerous Visions (August – December 2011)**

Sherlock has been officially dead for three months when the visions and corner-of-the-eye sightings of reflections of someone who isn’t actually there start up again.

Molly is working an overnight shift alone in the Path lab the first time it happens: a flash of something reflected in the pile of unwashed beakers some idiot lab tech has left for the morning staff to deal with. As she looks, the reflective surface of a particularly large glass container seems, just for a moment, to show her Sherlock's face.

She turns reflexively to look behind her, her heart giving a funny little skip at the thought that he might have returned, but no. She is alone. When she looks back at the glass, she sees only her own distorted reflection. She is disappointed and yet strangely excited; it has been far too long since she’s seen a vision of him like this, and she takes it as a good sign. The last time this happened she met him; perhaps this means he is still alive and well.

It happens again a few weeks later, shortly after a visit from Greg Lestrade, who's come round during one of Molly's rare daytime shifts to check under the fingernails of a murder victim. Apparently the criminologist on the scene had neglected to do so, and Lestrade hopes that whatever might be found there will help pinpoint the identity of the murderer.

He’s right, as it turns out. “Guess some of Sherlock's techniques rubbed off on me a bit,” he quips as he thanks Molly for her assistance. “Good thing he wasn't there tonight or Davies' ears would still be blistered for missing something so obvious.”

Molly smiles. “Oh, I'm sure you gave him an earful anyway, right? Chewed him out in your own inimitable style?”

She and Greg are friends, will never be anything more than friends no matter how many times his wife leaves him or vice versa. No matter how many times he asks her out while deep in his cups. She respects him too much as a colleague to allow any kind of romantic attachment to form. Besides, how can she even think about dating another man when she is still hopelessly in love with Sherlock?

Everyone had advised her to move on even before the man supposedly killed himself; how can she possibly explain that she isn’t just mourning him, that she is waiting for him to finish the work he's started and come home again? Even if her romantic hopes are, in words she’s never forgotten, ‘however forlorn’, she can’t bring herself to say yes to any of the (thankfully few) men who ask her out. Not even one as lovely as Greg.

‘However forlorn’. She can’t help but think that truer words were never spoken. She is trying really hard to convince herself that friendship will be enough, to take Sherlock’s final words before leaving her flat to heart. To believe that the kiss he gave her when she agreed to help him is the only romantic moment the two of them will ever share.

She tries not to think about that kiss for so many reasons, not only because of that lurking truth, but because it still confuses her. Not that Sherlock kissed her, or that she kissed him, but because of the guilt it raised in her. She hadn’t felt this way after kissing his drug-addled self in her shower the night of his overdose, so why does one freely given continue to bother her so much?

She is silently arguing with herself about that kiss after Lestrade leaves when it happens.

She’s slid the drawer holding the murder victim's body back into place and closed the door when she looks up, gasping as she sees Sherlock's reflection, far more clearly than the brushed aluminum surface should show. Clearly enough to see the sideburns, the grey eyes, and the incongruous additions of a top hat on his head and a pair of grey gloves on his hands, one of which is clutching an old-fashioned walking stick.

Once, she tells herself, could have been wishful thinking, but twice – and this second time so clear, so vivid she feels she could reach out and touch him – means something. It has to. Especially seeing him so oddly dressed – a disguise of some sort? Either that or he is secretly involved in amateur theatricals, which thought causes her to giggle – the first laughter she’s allowed herself in months. It feels…good. Surprisingly good.

She hopes John can allow himself these moments as well. Even if he has nothing so concrete as knowledge that Sherlock faked his death to go on, she still hopes he can allow himself some happiness. They don’t see each other very often, but when they do she feels almost choked with guilt. He seems so lost, still grieving his friend, burdened by having been forced to witness such a shocking moment. Sometimes Molly feels angry at Sherlock on John’s behalf; she even tried, when he was staying in her flat, to convince him to let her tell him the truth after a suitable amount of time had passed.

His response had been a flat ‘no’ and a swift change of subject, and she’d let it drop. But it makes it so hard, no matter how limited their contact may be. She and John have eaten lunch together once or twice since the funeral, and Mrs. Hudson is constantly inviting Molly over for dinner or a cuppa or to watch telly. She finds it difficult to interact with them, with her secret knowledge weighing so heavily on her heart, but their grief is genuine and she can no more refuse to do whatever she can for them than she can stop loving Sherlock.

Eventually, however, as weeks turn into months, things start to turn around a bit; John meets a lovely nurse named Mary Morstan, who works at the same clinic he now does, and Mrs. Hudson has a new boyfriend as well. Even Greg and his wife seem to be really, truly reconciled, and everyone is moving on with their lives.

Everyone but her. By now the visions become a burden rather than a gift. Sherlock frequently seems sad, haunted almost (and if that isn’t a statement of irony nothing is). What’s more, he seems so very alone that it makes Molly’s heart ache every time she sees him.

It is on the six month anniversary of his 'death,' however, that she discovers the true meaning of heartbreak, when she experiences a dream so vivid, so real, that she wakes from it sobbing.

She has a certain bedtime ritual, no matter if she’s going to sleep in the early morning after an overnight shift or at a more normal time: she cleans her teeth, washes off the little makeup she wears, brushes and braids her hair, makes sure her cat, Toby, has fresh water and a bit of kibble, checks the locks on her door – including the deadbolt she had a locksmith install after Jim Moriarty paid his unwelcome visit to her back in 2010 – then confirms that all windows are closed and locked. It is only after she’s finished with this that she puts on her pyjamas and crawls under the covers. She usually reads for a few minutes before turning off the light, sometimes for as long as a half-hour but no longer, no matter how absorbing the book.

Routine and ritual have always helped her get to sleep no matter how stressed or unhappy her day has made her. Tonight, however, she adds a silent prayer for Sherlock’s safety to a God she isn’t sure she still believes in. It’s the first time she’s prayed since her father died, and it strikes her as a little hypocritical on her part that she’s waited for the anniversary of Sherlock’s ‘death’ before doing so.

The dream starts shortly after she drifts off, nodding over the mystery novel she is half-way through. The book slips from her fingers and falls to the floor as she rolls on her side, and a smile curves her lips at the visions dancing behind her eyes.

_She’s in the morgue, leaning over one of the metal autopsy tables, scribbling notes on a piece of paper, when she hears a noise at the door. She looks over her shoulder ]and sees Sherlock standing there. She smiles and turns back to her notes, but in the way of dreams the paper has transformed into a laptop and her fingers tap frantically at the keys as she types out line after line of gibberish._

_She feels him behind her, close, and smiles again. She starts to turn but is trapped between his body and the cold metal of the table, sees his hands resting on either side of hers. Then she feels his lips on the back of her neck - her dream-self is wearing a vest and khakis but no lab coat - and lets out a sigh of pleasure._

_His hands move to her arms, rubbing them slowly, and he presses himself closer to her, so close she can feel the heat of his erection through the layers of clothing they are both still wearing…and then suddenly, aren’t. He feels so good, his bare flesh rubbing against hers, jolts of electricity radiating from where he touches her directly to her groin, and she moans again, his name a guttural growl on her lips:_ _“Sherlock…”_

_As soon as she says his name he turns her in his arms and kisses her, a kiss a thousand times more passionate than the ones they’ve shared in the real world. His mouth opens under hers, their tongues gliding together, his hands lowering to her hips and her fingers tangled in his glorious dark brown curls._

_She feels his knee between her legs, nudging her legs apart, and widens her stance without a single moment’s hesitation, raising one leg to wrap around his thighs, feeling his hands slide down to cup her bum before he lifts her to the table – no longer cold and now just the right height for him to brush his burning erection against her center as his lips move from her mouth to her throat, sucking eagerly at her pulse point. She continues to moan his name, hears her own on his lips although the voice sounds like it is coming from further away…and how can he be calling her name when his mouth is fully occupied with suckling her breasts, moving between them with barely time to take a breath, let alone speak?_

_She ignores the discrepancy, too lost in the sensations her dream Sherlock is evoking, but it is an aspect of the dream that will linger in her mind after she wakes…and wonders._

_But that is for later. For now she is winding her arms around dream-Sherlock’s neck as he raises his head to rain a series of languorous kisses on her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead, until his mouth finally lands back on her lips._

_When she opens her eyes the two of them are no longer standing but lying down on what  has once again become a steel autopsy table. He is urging her legs apart and she is moving underneath him, her hand stealing to his erection, grasping it and guiding him into her when she hears his voice again, coming from some unknown distance, low and anguished as he moans out, “God, no, Molly, not with_ him _...” His voice trails off to almost a whisper for the last words, so low she has to strain to hear them over the sudden thundering of her heart: “It should have been me…”_

_She clutches her lover's shoulders with suddenly icy hands, raises herself up and peers into the darkness of the morgue. Brown eyes meet grey, so sad, so lost and lonely that she cries out in despair…_

…and awakens, shaking and sweating, the sound of his voice still echoing through her mind as the tears begin to fall.

**oOo**

_Sherlock jolts awake in a cold sweat, his breathing ragged and his heart thundering in his chest. He stares blankly at the ceiling above his bed, not recognizing it for a long moment. Then reality fully reclaims him from the dream - nightmare - he’s just experienced, and he sits up with an abrupt movement, throwing the covers from him and stumbling to his feet._

_He makes his way to the window, throwing it open and leaning out to take several long, desperate gulps of the cool night air._

_As he stares unseeingly down at the darkened streets of his beloved London, he wonders what he did to deserve this fresh hell that’s been heaped upon him tonight. He longs for the oblivion of the needle that he no longer owns, and briefly entertains the thought of visiting an opium den in order to obliterate the hated memory of the dream he just experienced._

_A dream that wasn’t even his own; no, somehow he was actually sharing_ Molly’s _dream, a dream of such a prurient nature it would make him blush to think of it, if not for the welling despair in his heart._

_She loves him, that future version of himself, in spite of the lengthy list of flaws the prat has demonstrated. That they are very similar to his own flaws does nothing to mitigate the disdain with which he regards that version of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ - a disdain which is almost entirely due to his envy and frustration, if he were to be honest with himself. Molly Hooper exists in the same time period as that Sherlock. She’s kissed him, worked with him, demonstrated her love and loyalty to him, and received nothing but heartache in return. “If only I could, I would swap our places,” he murmurs, running frustrated fingers through the tangled curls on his head._

_And he would, too; not just because he knows the danger Molly still faces from Moriarty, but also...also because he would very much like to hold her in his arms again, as he did the night he and his future self actually_ did _swap places._

_But no, he is trapped here in his own life, while she goes about hers; they can glimpse one another, but even if by some miracle he did find himself standing in front of her, what good would it do? He isn’t the man she loves, and the dream that wrenched him from sleep is further proof of that painful truth._

_The dream where he was forced to bear witness to the physical passion she feels for his future self. Where he stood watching, a helpless spectator, as Molly and that other Sherlock engaged in sexual congress in the sterile setting of the hospital morgue._

_At least he can comfort himself that she’d been aware of him at the end, when their eyes had met, hers widening in surprise as he’d whispered in despair, “It should have been me.”_

_Pulling his head back inside, he shuts the window with a clatter, then turns and pulls on his dressing gown. Sleep is not to be pursued for what remains of the night, lest he find himself once again pulled into Molly’s dreams of his future self._

_With the needle out of his reach, his only other option is to lose himself in the music of the masters. Mrs. Hudson will doubtlessly chastise him for disturbing her sleep when she brings him his morning tea, but he can’t find it in himself to care._

_He draws the bow across the strings, and begins playing Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The inspiration for parts of this chapter comes from two different songs: "Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush and Meatloaf's "A Kiss Is A Terrible Thing To Waste", most notably the lines 'if I only could' and 'it should have been me'.


	10. Again, Dangerous Visions

**Again, Dangerous Visions (August – December 2011)**

She doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night, and the next night isn’t much better. The dream doesn’t return, but she keeps waking up, restless and anxious, afraid it will happen again. Why are her feelings about Sherlock so churned up? Why does she feel such an overpowering sense of guilt whenever she thinks about him, about kissing or being with him?

Eventually the lingering pain of the dream fades - but never completely. Only enough for her to finally stop dreading sleep, for waking life to return to the normal it has become since she helped Sherlock fake his death.

She sees John a bit more frequently after that, and meets his girlfriend Mary, a nurse he works with. She’s friendly, kind and has a quirky sense of humour that appeals to Molly. More than anything, however, it’s clear that she’s the best thing that could have happened to John after Sherlock’s ‘suicide’, and Molly is grateful he has her in his life.

It’s easier to commiserate with John and their other friends now that she’s practically in the same boat they are, since she never knows from one day to the next whether Sherlock is alive or dead. She hasn’t seen or spoken to his brother Mycroft since the funeral, and has heard very little from Sherlock himself since he left her flat.

She still has the text she received from him that morning, a simple two word message from an anonymous sender: _Thank you._ She’ll never erase that message; it means too much to her.

She's received two additional texts assuring her of his continued existence – each from a different number, both of them originating somewhere outside of the UK – and an email that had erased itself as soon as she tried to save it. Which is probably for the best, since she suspects any reasonably intelligent six-year-old could figure out her passwords, no matter how clever she thinks she’s being.

She’s in the Path lab, in the middle of yet another overnight shift. It's the one year anniversary of Sherlock’s ‘suicide’ and she’s been crowding her schedule, trying her best to keep her mind from fretting over his continued absence. At least the media attention that heralded his six-month anniversary is missing this time around; everyone is too busy fussing over Prince William and his new bride to care about one disgraced former Consulting Detective.

Well, everyone but a select few. There had been talk of getting together over a few pints but at the last minute everything falls apart: John is going away with Mary; Greg Lestrade and his wife have reconciled yet again and are on honeymoon (fourth? fifth?); and Mrs. Hudson’s niece has given birth to twins. In Leeds.

Even though it’s irrational, Molly can't help feeling a bit like she's being shunned. She knows it’s only the guilt that’s never far from her heart colouring her emotions, but it still hurts...and it still feels like nothing less than what she deserves. She sits in the lab, sipping her tepid tea and trying to console herself with the knowledge that - at least for now - Sherlock is still alive.

The only tangible proof she has for that is the two postcards she’s received. The first one came only a month ago, sent from – of all places – Tibet. It is a close-up of the current Dalai Lama’s face, smiling serenely from behind his wire-framed glasses. The scrawled note purports to be from her friend ‘Charlene Sigerson’ who is apparently having a wonderful time and wishes Molly was there.

The second one she only received this morning, this time from Switzerland. Her peripatetic mate ‘Charlene’ is visiting the famous Reichenbach Falls, and the image is of the falls themselves. The message is as simple and terse as the first one, although a bit more poetic than she would expect from Sherlock. ‘Haunting place to visit but I wouldn’t want to stay, missing home a bit.’

Like the last one, the signature is a scrawled ‘Charlene Sigerson’ with no other salutation. She tries not to read too much into the message, but can’t stop hoping that it means he will actually be returning home, to London, and soon. If he does, at least he will return to a cleared name and no outstanding warrants for his arrest, since someone in the government – she assumes it is Mycroft – has been busy restoring Sherlock's reputation behind the scenes. The real kidnapper of the Bruhl siblings has been prosecuted and imprisoned – admitting during testimony to being paid by Moriarty to use photos of Sherlock to terrorize the children into believing he was behind it all – and, most importantly, ‘Richard Brook’ has been proven to be the fake.

With Moriarty's existence firmly established as real and many of his schemes revealed, she knows it can't be long. Though the message on the postcard isn't anything more than Sherlock showing a bit of the sentiment he normally despises, it gives her more hope than she's held in ages.

She blames the second postcard for the dream she has when she dozes in her office later that evening. A dream that she will one day discover to actually be a memory - but not her own.

It’s deceptively simple, at least at first. She’s standing on a precipice with no sensation of dizziness or fear of falling as she gazes down at the cascades of water flowing from the opposite height. The mist and churning waters below obscure the details, but she knows there are rocks and a rushing river and jutting trees clinging for survival from the crevasses and cracks in the earth.

She knows such knowledge will save her, although she’s not sure why she needs saving when she initially feels no sense of danger. Unfortunately, the sense of serenity, of acceptance, almost, vanishes in an instant and she finds herself falling, hurtling down into the churning waters; she can feel the searing cold of the water and the Alpine air combining to freeze the very marrow in her bones. When she lands, there is no startling awake as one normally does in such dreams. Instead there is only more cold and the choking sensation of water in her lungs, causing panic to bubble in her gut and press against her ribs. There is darkness all around, close and confining, and the swift movement of the icy rapids bearing her away. She can't breathe, she can't see, and all she can hear is the rushing of the water; she's miscalculated, no one can survive this, it's the end after all, and her last coherent thought is one that doesn't feel at all like her own: _James will be so vexed with me..._

She wakes up sprawled on the floor of the lab, her chair knocked over and her hair in her face, coughing so hard her throat hurts. She's scraped her hands on the linoleum tiles and her knees are sore and she is absolutely freezing in spite of her warm clothing. She manages to pull herself to her feet, still feeling a bit stunned from the intensity of the dream – nightmare – she has just experienced, but all she can do is wonder why she would care about Jim Moriarty being upset with her. Shivering, she stumbles out of the lab and into her office for a warming cup of coffee.

**oOo**

_He falls to the floor with a shout, the bedclothes tangled around his thrashing limbs. By God, he hasn’t dreamed of the Reichenbach Falls in years, why does his mind persist in conjuring up such torturous memories now, of all times? As he frees himself and pulls himself to his feet, he hears the sound of footsteps on the stairs. “I’m fine, Mrs. Hudson, just a nightmare, go back to bed!” he calls irritably._

_However, when the door opens, it’s not his landlady but James who he finds confronting him. “Holmes,” he barks, “what the devil is going on? I’ve never known you to have nightmares, certainly none strong enough to cause you to fall out of bed!”_

_“What are you doing here?” Sherlock demands, ignoring his friend’s querulous inquiry. “I have no idea of the time, but surely it’s a bit too late in the evening - or early in the morning - for a social call!”_

_“Agreed,” James snorts. Sherlock sits on the edge of the bed while James fiddles with the gaslight, turning it up just enough for them to see one another. He takes the chair Sherlock indicates, watching him with a frown. “Holmes, as a medical man I can assure you I’m used to late night summonses, but never before have I received one on your behalf.”_

_Sherlock raises an eyebrow at this. “And I can assure you, aside from the depredations of my sleeping mind, I am perfectly well. I have been eating and sleeping, lest Mrs. Hudson once again attempt to drug me into compliance. And although it is true this case has been occupying my mind a great deal…”_

_“What case?” James asks, clearly frustrated. He leans forward in his chair, hands laced together in his lap. “What case is that has you involved with spiritualist mediums and research into esoteric religions?”_

_“Only one medium,” Sherlock corrects him, ignoring his obvious quest for more information. “The one, I perceive, who penned the note urging you to come here tonight.”_

_James nods and reaches into his jacket, pulling out a neatly folded piece of paper. “Yes, Miss Morgan is the one who sent the message. The boy who carried it could easily have been mistaken for one of your Irregulars, although I suppose he’s connected with the theater or her show.”_

_Sherlock holds out his hand impatiently, and with a sigh James rises and crosses the short distance between bed and chair to hand over the note. Sherlock reads it once, twice, a third time, a frown creasing the flesh between his brows. “What is it, what does it say?” James asks._

_Sherlock hesitates before answering; to do so will inevitably lead to more questions, questions he has been reluctant to address before now. But if Charlotte felt compelled to involve James - she could have easily sent the note directly to Baker Street - then perhaps that is her way of telling him it’s time to bring his friend into his confidence. With that in mind, he reads the message aloud: “_ Matters will be coming to a head very soon. Trust me when I say that you’ll know what to do when the time comes. CM _”_

_“Matters? What matters?” James asks as Sherlock carefully folds the note and lays it on his bedside table. “Holmes, what is this case about, exactly?”_

_“It’s a very long story, going back many years,” Sherlock says, moving to take his dressing-gown from the back of the door. He gestures toward the hall. “I believe we’ll both be more comfortable in the sitting room while I tell it, John.”_

_James pauses in the act of exiting the room. “Who’s John?” he asks sharply, and Sherlock can see his gaze sharpening._

_Sherlock can practically feel the suspicion oozing from his friend’s pores, and sighs. “I can assure you, James, that I am not acting under the influence of anything other than my own mind. Please, allow me to explain in full, and when I’ve finished, I will listen to anything you might choose to say on the matter. As for John...that is part of the tale, and I beg your indulgence in allowing me to withhold that information until its proper place.”_

_James hesitates, then nods and exits the room. Sherlock lowers the gas and shuts the door, bracing himself mentally for what he knows will be a very vexing conversation._


	11. It's Complicated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holmes and Watson discuss the supernatural events Holmes has been experiencing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, broomclosetkink, for being a fab beta!

**It’s Complicated (The Victorian Era - Date Unknown)**

James is sitting in what is still referred to as ‘his’ chair, directly across from the seat Holmes has taken. He is waiting patiently for his friend to speak, or at least, as patiently as the present circumstances can allow. After several long moments pass, during which Holmes merely presses his fingertips to his lips and stares down at his crossed legs, James finally speaks. “Holmes, you promised an explanation. I have been rousted from my warm bed…”

“And the loving arms of your fiancée,” Holmes murmurs, then looks up to meet James’ indignant gaze. “My apologies. Old habits die hard, I fear. How fares the future Mrs. Watson?”

“She is fine, although surely anxious for my return,” James retorts, dropping all pretence that the two of them aren’t sharing his bed more nights than not these days. “It’s not like you to exchange polite pleasantries, Holmes. So do me the courtesy of explaining exactly why I am here and not home.”

He watches closely as Holmes blinks, then slowly lowers his fingers from his lips and rests them on the arms of his chair. The tip of one taps - nervously? - against the leather as he finally meets James’ eyes. “You’re going to find what I’m about to tell you somewhat...difficult to believe, but I promise you, James, in all earnestness, that what I’m about to recount is nothing more nor less than the absolute truth. And I can also promise you that it has nothing to do with any of my unsavory former habits involving the needle.”

James nods, although privately he reserves the right to ascertain the truth of that statement for himself. When Holmes begins to speak of seeing visions and being haunted in his dreams by the face and form of a young woman from the future - one Molly Hooper, the identity of the mystery woman revealed at last! - those doubts rise up and threaten to bubble into speech. However, he has given his word to wait until Holmes has completed his tale before commenting, and thus remains silent. In spite of this resolve, he knows that his expression is giving much away to a man as observant as his friend.

“I have seen this woman’s face in my dreams, and often in the waking world, since I was a boy of fourteen,” Holmes continues. “Or rather, ‘these women’ as I have learnt that there are actually two Miss Hoopers who have been haunting me. Do you recall the shirtwaist factory fire of 1879?” he asks suddenly, an apparent non-sequitur.

James nods; he remembers that horrific event all too well, even if it occurred while he was still serving in the army. “A number of the young ladies working there perished because they’d been locked in by their employer in order to keep them from stealing,” he responds with a sad shake of his head.

“Including one Margaret Hooper,” Holmes states. A shadow passes his face. “I...dreamt of her death,” he continues softly. “More than once.”

James cannot help raising his brow at that. “Perhaps you read her name in the papers, and your sympathy - er, outrage - at the unjust manner of her passing is what brought on your dreams?

Holmes gives an impatient shake of his head. “I told you, Watson - I dreamt of her long before her sad demise, and until recently I had no idea what the dream meant. As you know, there were no sketches of the unfortunate victims in the papers and therefore no way for me to be aware of her appearance. Nor did her name mean anything to me; when the fire occurred, I hadn’t yet learned the name of my...occult visitor.”

He uses the term hesitantly, and once again James is hard-pressed to keep his opinion to himself. Holmes has declared himself free of opiates and he himself had destroyed the paraphernalia at Holmes’ own request not many months past. If not for that, he might have suspected such interest in spiritualism as a sure sign of a drug-addled mind.

But Holmes is as sharp and focused as James has ever seen him, and so he is forced to concede that, as the Bard so aptly put it, there might very well be ‘more things in heaven and earth’ than were dreamt of in his philosophy.

“If you desire proof of a more concrete nature, Watson, I can offer you this: After my return to London and our dispatching of Moran, I determined to discover the truth of her identity. With that in mind, I paid a call on one of my contacts, a young man named Billy Wiggins. I was going to describe her to him and then commission a sketch for him to show around. Upon being greeted by his wife and allowed to wait in the sitting room while she fetched him, I observed their wedding portrait on the wall. Out of nothing more than a desire to pass the time, I took a closer look. Imagine my consternation when I saw the face of the very woman I was looking for, acting as maid of honour to the happy couple.”

James started to offer the possibility that Holmes had seen that portrait before, but was again stopped before the words could reach his lips. “I can assure you, Watson, that I had never set foot in the Wiggins household before that day, and had never seen the photograph. Yet there she was, the woman who’d been haunting my dreaming mind for well over a decade. I’d found her at last, only to discover that she’d been killed...and thus learned the painful truth behind my dreams of fire.”

He sounds so lost, so bereft, that James impulsively leans forward and lays a sympathetic hand on his friend’s wrist. “I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. Whether Holmes’ interest in this woman is a delusion or somehow spiritual in nature, his emotions are very real - and very unexpected. “Holmes, forgive me, but it sounds almost as if you have...fallen in love with this spectre of your mind. I say this as friend - are you so certain that you haven’t conjured up this ‘Molly Hooper’ from the future in order to make up for the loss of Miss Margaret Hooper?”

Instead of snapping at him, Holmes offers him a small smile, a bare curve of the lips. “That thought had occurred to me. However, certain events have convinced me otherwise - both things that I have witnessed, and things that Miss Charlotte Morgan has shown me. It was she who gifted me with this.” He nods at the Cheval glass that dominates one corner of the room now. Holmes rises to his feet, striding over the glass and laying a hand on its surface after a brief hesitation.

He speaks as if to the mirror now, explaining in detail some of the things he’s witnessed, including medical procedures that make James wish for a notebook. The ‘Heimlich Maneuver’, for example, might have some real value in saving someone from choking to death, and the description Holmes gives of ‘cardiopulmonary resuscitation’ is even more intriguing. The details are far too complex, too intricate, to be mere delusions of Holmes’ mind; brilliant though his friend is, he is no medical man, and he recites the procedures for reviving someone who isn’t breathing as if reading from a textbook. And although the two procedures are ones James has never heard of, the plain truth of the matter is that they both seem very, very plausible.

He retains many reservations about what Holmes has shared with him, including his interactions with Miss Morgan; as far as James is concerned, all so-called spiritualist mediums are nothing but charlatans and cheats. But when Holmes describes the events of the meeting he attended - most notably Miss Morgan’s recitation of the events that took place at the Reichenbach Falls, events which very few people are privy to - he feels some of his skepticism lifting.

It isn’t until nearly six weeks later, after Holmes has endured yet another occult experience that seems to pull him from his own body and time into the future, that the skepticism falls shattered at his feet.

And all because of a vision of his future self - future descendent? - one Doctor John Watson...and his wife, Mary Watson, nee Morstan.

 


	12. Fever Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta broomclosetkink. Also many thanks to everyone who reads and follows and favorites this story.

**Fever Dream (September 2012)**

Molly’s life continues on as normal, with nothing happening out of the ordinary until she falls ill with the flu a few months after the unsettling incidents of her two not-quite dreams. She’s at work when it hits her; the scratchy throat and slight cough and run-down feeling she's had all evening virtually exploding into a fever with a cough so bad it feels as if she's trying to expel a lung. She texts Mike and tells him she's going home: even if she can't infect any of her 'patients' she can certainly pass whatever virulent pathogen she's contracted to her fellow hospital employees.

 For that same reason she opts for a cab instead of taking the Tube as she usually does. Once she's given the driver her address she leans her head against the coolness of the window, fighting down a growing nausea. She counts herself lucky when she wins that battle, paying the cabbie as soon as they reach her block of flats. She even manages, after a brief battle due to her wavering vision and sudden dizziness, to open the front door.

 She closes it behind her, decides against checking the post, and makes her way slowly up the stairs to her second-floor flat. By the time she reaches the landing, she is as worn out as if she’d climbed Mt. Everest, and barely manages to get the key into the door. Nor does she notice when she leaves it there, the other keys on the chain dangling and clattering, but she can't hear over the dull headache that has overlain her scalp, creeping down to her eyes. She's so fucking hot, she needs to get out of her coat and jumper. She drops them on the floor, leaving them wherever they land, kicks off her shoes and stumbles into the kitchen.

 Toby is meowing at her and winding his way around her ankles, which doesn't help, not in the least; she nearly trips over him twice before making it to the sink and gulping down two glasses of nice, cold water. She feeds Toby and fills his water dish as she considers making herself a pot of tea, but everything hurts too much; all she wants to do is lie down, so she plods into her bedroom, shucking her khakis and socks and falling into bed wearing nothing but her knickers and bra – both plain, sturdy white cotton, comfortable to work in but nothing she'd ever want a boyfriend to see.

A boyfriend. Molly snorts at the thought; the last man she dated turned out to be a homicidal maniac who still haunts her nightmares, no matter how hard she's tried to suppress the memories, to put them behind her.

 No. Don't think about Jim. Sherlock is a much more pleasant man to dwell on, even if her dream kisses with him are just as problematic as they are in real life. “Oh, give it up, Molly,” she groans to herself as she considers getting up to take some paracetamol, wishing she'd done so when still standing and not so comfortably ensconced in her bed. “Sherlock's never going to love you, that's why you felt so guilty when you kissed him that second time.”

 She falls asleep having successfully exorcised (so she thinks) Jim Moriarty from her thoughts. The truth is revealed in the terrifying dreams that invade her sleeping mind.

  _The nightmare is familiar at first: fire, the sensation of choking on the smoke, but then the smoke takes form and she sees his face - Moriarty, just as he looked that horrible night when he tried to kill Sherlock and John. The flames crackle behind him and he’s laughing at her, whispering his threats. “Surprise, luv!” he says with a grin while his hands squeeze tighter on her throat. “Did you miss me?”_

 She whimpers in her sleep, her dream-self clawing free of Moriarty’s grip long enough for her to call out for Sherlock. She _needs_ him, with a desperation she’s felt only once before…and suddenly the nightmare falls away and she sees him. He’s asleep in what she imagines must be his own bed, although she has never pictured him in so Victorian a setting before, with gaslight set low in a sconce on the papered walls, just enough for her to recognize his features, to notice that he’s still fully clothed. His eyes are shut, his breathing deep and even, and as she cries his name again he turns in his sleep, one arm reaching out as if to touch her. His presence in her dream is soothing, easing her fear, but the sound of Moriarty scratching, scratching at the door and calling her name in a low voice brings the terror back to life. “Sherlock,” she moans, her heart pounding. “Please…”

 Molly’s eyes open; she comes to semi-consciousness and finds herself - of course - in her own bed. When she turns her head, however, she is somehow not surprised to find Sherlock lying next to her, as if summoned by her sleep- and fever-addled mind, pulled from the dream into the waking world. When he opens his eyes, she notes that they are the steely grey of her dreams and giggles a bit. “Surprised to see you here, instead of old blue eyes,” she croaks out, desperately wishing she'd thought to bring a glass of water to put on her bedside table – and she really, really should have grabbed a couple of paracetamol, too. No wonder she dreamed of fire and Moriarty…

 Sherlock seems startled by her words, his eyes widening before narrowing into suspicious slits. She laughs, a weak laugh, the best she can do when her chest feels so tight, but his scowl is, for some reason, absolutely adorable right now. “You've no right to be 'fended,” she slurs, groping her hand out from under the covers as the urge to brush his sleep-tangled curls from his forehead overcomes her. “You're the one keeps changing eye colors and growing sideburns when I'm not looking...”

 Before she can reach him, however, a series of violent tremors overcome her and she feels her teeth chattering in her head. “S-so cold,” she mumbles, huddling deeper into the duvet as the sudden chills overtake her body. “Should've taken those pills before...”

 Then talking becomes far too much of an effort and she falls silent, slipping almost immediately into a light doze that Sherlock interrupts the way he does so many things – rudely. “Molly! I advise you to seek medical assistance immediately! Your symptoms point to a severe case of influenza!”

 She opens bleary eyes and stares at him blankly. “Yeah, ‘s just the flu,” she mumbles in response. “…get over it…”

 Her words do not seem to reassure him; as his face wavers in and out of focus, she sees the alarm in his eyes turn to a sort of desperate fear, and she wonders fuzzily if he’s afraid he’ll catch it from her. Well, it’s his own fault if he does; he’s the one who’s crawled into bed with her, after all, and then not even had the courtesy to snuggle up to her when all she wants is to feel his arms around her, maybe even have him press a soothing kiss to her forehead…

 “Molly!” This time his voice is a near shout, and her eyes snap open to see him no longer lying down but instead leaning over her, the desperate fear in his eyes even stronger, giving his features a haggard look she hasn’t seen since his drug-using days. “You must contact James!”

 She whimpers and turns her head to the side, her own fear rising at his words. “No, he’s dead, you said he killed himself…that’s not really him scratching at the door, it can’t be! Sherlock, you promised!” She has no idea that her eyes have filled with tears or that her hair is sweaty and sticking to her face or that she’s rambling, her words alternating between near-shouts of panic and incoherent mumbles. “You didn’t know, I never told you what he did…believed you when you said he killed himself…can’t let him t-touch me like that again…promise…please…never again.”

 She breaks into actual sobs at the memory of the night Jim Moriarty let himself into her flat and showed his true colors, curling around herself in an attempt to make herself a smaller target of phantom visions.

 Sherlock’s voice breaks through the terror, bringing her back to the here and now as best she can manage with her mind so foggy and unfocused. “John, Molly, call John; forgive me, I misspoke,” he says, sounding a bit panicky himself. When she simply stares at him, uncomprehending, his voice turns steely, commanding. “Your telephonic device, Molly,” he barks out. “Call John. Now.”

 She stares at him blankly for a moment longer before reaching out and obediently groping for her mobile, which she fortunately dropped onto her bedside table. She fumbles her password onto the screen, squinting to read it, trying to still the shaking of her hands, and manages to bring up John’s number, his smiling face – cheek pressed warmly against Mary’s – filling the screen. It’s nice that they found each other, John and Mary, and that he’s begun reaching out to his friends again; to her, to Mrs. Hudson and Greg…

 She swipes the screen to place the call, but as she does so her head lolls back on the pillow; she’s so tired, and it’s just the flu, she’ll get over it…Sherlock can just call John himself if he’s so worried, she reasons as her eyes flutter shut, her hand dropping to the duvet, the mobile rolling from her fingers.

 The sound of Sherlock shouting brings her momentarily awake; he isn’t shouting at her, however, but at the phone, where it has come to rest on the edge of her bed. He is telling John to come over now, that she needs help, and her eyes flutter shut once again, not in sleep but a deeper unconsciousness that drags her under for some unknown length of time.

 When she opens her eyes again, she is surprised to see, not Sherlock, but John Watson leaning over her, holding a stethoscope to her chest, eyes half-closed and lips compressed in concentration as he listens to her breathing. When he sees that she’s awake, he meets her eyes, a comforting smile on his lips. “Well, Molly, you gave us quite a scare, calling me like that,” he says, as if his words are supposed to make sense.

 Her blank stare must be enough, because he explains that she must have dialed him on her mobile, although – and he laughs a bit uncomfortably at the confession – at first he thought he was dreaming, because he was certain he heard Sherlock yelling at him.

 Mary walks into the room, holding a glass of water and a bottle of pills, and offers Molly a grin of her own, even though her cornflower-blue eyes are filled with concern. “Well, whether it was you or Sherlock’s ghost or your guardian angel, it’s a good thing they got through because you, my dear, are in terrible shape.” Her voice turns gently scolding as John moves out of the way so his fiancée can help Molly to a partial sitting position. “Your fever was so high I was afraid we’d have to put you in an ice bath to bring it down, but luckily it didn’t get to that point. Now,” she says, holding up the pills she’s shaken into her hand, “take these and then John is going to help you out of bed. I've run a nice lukewarm bath for you to soak in while we put some dry sheets on your bed.”

 Molly obediently swallows the pills, along with a soothing gulp of water, and does as Mary has told her. She starts a bit when she turns her head and sees Sherlock sitting on the edge of the bed opposite John, but no one else appears to see him and so she dismisses it as a product of her fever – although she can’t resist offering him a tiny smile, which the grey-eyed vision returns before vanishing.

  **oOo**

  _Sherlock is shaking as he startles awake, disoriented to find himself, not in Molly’s bedroom but his own. Had it all been a dream - ? No, of course not, foolish of him to believe so, even for a moment. Charlotte had warned him that his ability to perceive things beyond the ken of most mortals was one that would come upon him at unexpected moments._

  _He’s still terrified for Molly, but the confidence with which John and Mary - oh, so lovely and yet so painful to see the first Mrs. Watson in her future incarnation! - treated her illness gives him hope._

  _Mary Watson. His heart clenches in his chest at the memory of James’ beloved first wife. She and their child were taken too soon due to just such an illness, leaving John lost and grieving for far too long. It’s a great relief to his mind to see that there are treatments for such in the future, treatments and medication that will ensure Molly’s eventual return to full health. He’s almost tempted to breathe out a prayer, but in spite of his new awareness of the spiritual plane, nothing he’s learned about it from either his own experiences or Miss Charlotte Morgan’s explanations has led him to believe in the existence of a higher power._

  _On the other hand, as his mother would undoubtedly remind him were she and his father still alive, what harm could it do? Feeling slightly foolish, he whispers his fervent desires to whatever eternal presence might or might not exist, desires for Molly’s safe recovery from her illness, and that she be spared whatever ills the spirit-form of Moriarty might attempt to bestow upon her._

  _He remains awake until the sun begins to show, then falls into an uneasy slumber broken only by the sound of someone knocking on his bedroom door. Mrs. Hudson peeks in at his mumbled response. “Doctor Watson is here,” she announces. “It’s half-ten. He’ll be waiting in the sitting room and I’ll bring up a breakfast tray for you gentlemen to share.” She leaves before he can decide whether to acknowledge or ignore her words, and reluctantly gathers himself. This will be only the second time he’s spoken to James since revealing the truth of Molly/Margaret Hooper to him, and he has no desire to speak of this night’s occurrences._

  _He sees Charlotte Morgan’s frowning face in his mind’s eye at that thought, and winces. Whether it is a true vision or simply his own conscience prodding him, he knows exactly what her disapproval means: he has shared his secret with James, and must keep nothing further from him if he does not wish to lose his trust, his friendship._

  _The truth of the matter is, telling James had been a relief, in spite of his obvious reservations and quite understandable skepticism. Neither man has held much stock in the spiritualist movement, and to have it proven - at least to Holmes’ satisfaction - to be just as real as the world they can see and touch is difficult to accept. Especially for a man who once proclaimed: “_ The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply. _”_

  _Oh how smug he’d been, how certain that the world of the tangible was all there was to life._

  _He knows better now._

  _He glances down at his rumpled attire, deciding to forgo a change of clothing in favor of pulling his favorite dressing-over the shirt and trousers he’d been wearing when he fell into bed the previous night. He enters the bath chamber through the glass-fronted door to take care of nature and splash some water on his face, then exits via the common door into the hall. James starts to rise as soon as he enters the sitting room, but he waves his friend back into his chair. “It’s not a case that brings you here, Watson, so it can only be concern for my humble self that rousts you from home on a fine Sunday morning. Have you received further missives from our spiritualist friend, or is it your fiancée who enjoins you to look in on me this time?”_

  _It is the wrong tone to take but his peevishness cannot be helped; he is still troubled by the transference of his - soul? Spirit? Essence? - to Molly’s time, even in so incorporeal a form, that his him out of sorts._

  _That, and the knowledge that he will have to share_ all _he experienced with James - including the information that not only do they have future counterparts, but that the first Mrs. Watson does as well. He isn’t sure why that information needs to be shared, only that it cannot remain his secret. If he is to describe the events of the night before to his friend, then he must leave out no details._

  _“Miss Morgan has not contacted me since that first time,” James says, somewhat stiffly as he folds the morning paper and sets it fully aside. Mrs. Hudson bustles into the room, breakfast tray in her hands, and James hurries to relieve her of it. She thanks him with a smile, gives Sherlock a disapproving sniff - no doubt at his uncivilized appearance - and disappears back downstairs._

  _“Then to what do I owe the dubious pleasure of your presence?” Sherlock asks once the two men are alone. “I have not touched the needle since handing my apparatus over to Miss Smith, nor are there any cases…” He stops abruptly, peering closer at his friend, and immediately goes on his guard. “Something’s happened,” he pronounces. “Something deeply unsettling. You were not reading the paper, you were using it as prop, attempting to convey an aspect of normality for Mrs. Hudson’s benefit. What’s wrong?”_

  _“I had a dream last night,” James says bluntly, not bothering with the usual falderal of marveling at or being disgruntled by his friends’ acuity. “A very troublesome dream, and one that I feel is somehow related to all that you’ve already shared with me regarding Miss Molly Hooper.”_

  _“Do tell,” Sherlock invites him, intrigued. He takes the chair opposite that of his friend, crosses one leg over the other and steeples his fingers beneath his lower lip. Whatever James is about to reveal, he will listen with an open mind, just as the other man has done for him, even if this ‘troublesome dream’ turns out only to be a rehashing of the events Sherlock has already revealed. The works of the unconscious mind can be quite complex, after all...but when James speaks, Sherlock is shocked into silence by the other man’s revelations._

  _“In this dream, I was lying in my bed, with Mary by my side - but when I turned to face her, it wasn’t my current fiancée, but rather my first...it was Mary,” he says with growing agitation. “I saw the golden color of her hair, the blue of her eyes…” He falls silent for a moment, clearly choked up at the memory, and it is his next words that ensure Sherlock’s continued speechlessness._

_“There was a sound from the bed-table, as of music playing, and in my dream I reached for a small rectangular device I’d never seen before - and coming from the device, once I’d pressed my fingers to it in what can only be described as a deliberate series of motions, I spoke - and heard your voice, frantically calling to me, telling me that Miss Hooper - Molly - was seriously ill.”_

  _As Sherlock listens in mounting consternation, James recounts, detail for detail, the events that occurred in the previous night’s visionary visit to Molly Hooper’s flat: the reassurances ‘John’ Watson gave to the ailing woman, the running of the bath...and Mary._

  _James’ face is ashen when he finishes speaking, and he lowers his head to his shaking hands as the last words fall from his lips. “Sherlock,” he whispers through his fingers, “it was as if she was still alive, still with us...seeing her so happy, feeling the glow of love as though I were awake and not dreaming…” He raises his head and stares at Sherlock with the hollow expression of a man who has been thoroughly gutted. “Is this the sort of torture you’ve been enduring since coming of age? My God, man, no wonder you disdain emotional attachments!”_

  _Any commentary Sherlock might have in response is stilled by the sound of a woman’s shrill cry for help - coming not from the window outside his flat, but from the Cheval glass. He knows that voice, leaps to his feet and runs over to stare at the vision it reveals - a vision James also sees, as he can tell by the hissed intake of breath his friend gives as he joins him. “Holmes, what the devil - ?”_

_“Molly,” he says flatly, hands curling into ineffectual fists at his side._

_Molly, fending off an attack from not only the future version of Colonel Sebastian Moran - but also, as the glass clearly shows, the amorphous form of Professor James Moriarty, hovering over all like the malevolent spirit he is._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote about 'no ghosts need apply' is from the ACD story "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire."


	13. The Mirror of Her Dreams

**The Mirror of Her Dreams (December 2013)**

The mirror is large, old-fashioned, and entirely out of place in the path lab, but Molly likes it. She likes the gilt edging that has rubbed away in spots on the ornate curlicues of the Rococo frame; she likes the way she can actually see her entire self in it since, and she likes that she's the only one who makes use of it that isn't so tall they have to hunch down a bit. For that reason, she is even selfishly glad that it has been so securely screwed into place by the unknown person who installed it sometime in the 1970s that it can't be raised or lowered without damage to the cupboard door on which it hangs. It has character, something sadly lacking in the modern, sterile room in which it hangs.

She much prefers it to the smaller one in the cramped office she shares with three other pathologists, and definitely to the one in her locker. She doesn't consider it vanity – not entirely – to want to check herself out before leaving the lab, especially after hours of leaning over a microscope or flipping through files while tugging on her hair as she often does. She'll never forget the day she accidentally undid half of a braid and left the lab, still perusing a file she was fetching for someone – Sherlock, of course – with her hair looking like (in the words of her horrified friend and fellow pathologist, Meena Parker) ‘something a homeless witch wouldn't be caught dead wearing’.

She'd let the comment pass at the time because it was true, yes, but also because Meena is one of her few 'friends' that hasn't subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) tried to 'do something' about Molly's choice of work clothes. Molly sighs as she looks herself over critically. Why does everyone think that, just because she dresses comfortably (and warmly, very important to dress warmly in a morgue) for work, that she has no idea how to dress otherwise? She shrugs, straightens her cardigan, pats her hair into some semblance of tidiness and turns to leave when some small noise alerts her to the fact that she's no longer alone.

There’s a man in the room with her, a strange man in scrubs, holding a key card but looking no more like a medical professional than she does a ballerina. “Can I help you?” she asks, doing her best to keep her voice steady and cheerful. Whoever he is, whatever reasons he has for being where he clearly doesn't belong, she has no desire to raise his suspicions. All she wants is to get out of the room so she can call Security on her mobile and let them deal with him.

With that goal in mind, she moves forward a few steps, being careful not to turn away from him, knowing the smile on her lips has become fixed and phony, but there’s nothing she can do about that now.

Especially when he remains in front of the door, blocking her exit while watching her from bright green eyes that hold as much warmth as the emeralds whose color they most closely resemble. When he speaks, his voice is low and full of menace, freezing Molly in place even before he pulls the knife from his behind his back. “Where is he?”

“Where's who?” she asks, while her mind skitters around in a panic. But her voice remains steady, her eyes watchful and her body prepared for any necessary action, tensed but not paralyzed.

He laughs, a high-pitched, semi-hysterical sound that she’s not expecting. This laugh holds the edge of madness within it, and she shivers at the thought of facing someone unhinged or on drugs – either would explain the chilling laughter, the glittering brightness of his eyes – and for a moment she thinks she sees something she recognizes in those eyes, as if Jim Moriarty is peering out at her.

She dismisses the fanciful thought, forcing herself to focus on the immediate threat and not the one that only exists in her own mind. Jim killed himself in front of Sherlock's eyes. There had been no trickery; she’d processed Jim’s body herself. And she wasn’t the only one who knew the truth: the news had been full of his suicide after someone – presumably Sherlock's terrifying older brother – had 'leaked' the information once Sherlock was safely away from London.

_And why conjure up a long dead threat when faced with a brand new one?_ Molly thinks with a bit of hysteria, once again clamping tightly on her emotions before they force her into doing something stupid – like trying to push her way past the man still set so solidly in front of the door. And brandishing a knife; she mustn’t forget the knife although she can’t allow herself to wonder what he plans to do with it.

Instead, she takes a slow step backward, keeping her eyes focused on him. “I don't know who you are or what you want, but there are no drugs kept here that could do you any good, I promise...”

“Drugs!” he spits out, as if the word disgusts him. He runs a shaky hand over his face, but never blocks his eyes, even for a second, and the knife remains steady in his left hand. “Drugs haven't done anything for me, they don't shut up his fucking voice or keep me from seeing him whenever I...”

He draws a long, ragged breath, and seems to steady himself, to back away from the hysteria she can hear in his voice. His eyes narrow, and he takes a deliberate step forward. “Where. Is. He,” he repeats, each word a precisely-voiced sentence. “Don't play dumb with me, Dr. Hooper. We – I – know you helped him. That he's not dead. You're hiding him, or at least you know where he's hiding. Tell me where he is and you might come out of this room with your looks intact.”

The knife twitches in his hand and Molly can't help flinching away, taking another full step backwards. Sherlock, he must be talking about Sherlock, but how could he possibly know she helped him? Mycroft was supposed to have made sure of that...

The stranger advances on her, knife still twitching and teeth bared in a grimace of what might be pain as he briefly presses his free hand to the side of his head. Molly's medical training automatically rattles off a number of possible reasons for both the apparent pain and his threatening behavior - an aneurism, a tumor? - but nothing that could account for his certainty that Sherlock Holmes is alive, and that she knows where he is.

She doesn’t, of course; she doubts very much that he’s still in Switzerland and has no idea where he might have gone since then. While her mind is racing, she bumps into something and gasps; instinct causes her head to whip around and she realizes that it's the corner of the still-open storage cupboard before returning her attention to the dangerous stranger in front of her.

In that split-second of divided attention he's moved forward, close enough to cut her if he wants to. Without thinking Molly snatches up the first thing that comes to hand, a metal instrument tray, and swings it at his head when he’s temporarily distracted by the clatter of glass smashing to the floor.

The tray connects with the side of his head; he cries out and staggers. Molly runs past him as fast as her feet can carry her, but quick as a striking snake he grabs the back of her collar. She cries out as she crashes to the floor, then starts to scream as loudly as she can when he pulls her back to her feet, fisting his hands in the fabric of her cardigan. He snarls and slaps a hand over her mouth, hard, squeezing so tightly she has no opportunity to bite him.

She continues to fight, kicking and scratching at him, until the knife she's half-forgotten in her panic is suddenly held tight against her throat. She stops fighting him as he holds her against his body tightly enough for her to feel the angry throbbing of his heart pounding against her back, as if he is as frightened as she is, although she doubts this man is terrified of much. His body is feverishly hot against hers, and she wonders again about possible medical reasons for this inexplicable assault.

“Last chance, Doctor Hooper,” he says in a low growl, his breath hot on her ear. “Sherlock Holmes. Where the fuck is he hiding?”

“Sherlock is d-dead,” Molly says when he lowers his hand from her mouth. She fights down the urge to whimper but is unable to keep the stutter under control. She’s cried enough tears to last a lifetime, and now is certainly no time to give in to her fear. “He’s not hiding anywhere, he’s dead.”

“No he’s not,” the man says with another mad titter. “Jim says he’s alive, and if Jim Moriarty says he’s alive, then he’s alive.”

Oh god, she really _is_ being menaced by a madman, if that’s what he believes! But when she tries to protest again, the stranger slams her back against the wall, forcing the breath from her lungs. As she wheezes and gasps, the door to the storage cupboard slowly back swings open, revealing the mirror. The man stares at it; without warning, he drops the knife and hauls Molly closer, grabbing a double fistful of her cardigan. “Tell me where he fucking is,” he snarls, “or you’re the one who’ll be dead.”

Then he shoves her against the mirror; Molly closes her eyes in anticipation of the impact, of the feel of cracked glass against her body, but instead finds herself falling, falling, as if the solid mirror was nothing but an illusion. She cries out, once, opening her eyes to see the stranger gaping at her, reaching out as if to grab her; she frantically tries to take his hand, but she’s fallen too far, too fast; there’s a sort of viscous fluid surrounding her, swallowing her up; her skin feels as if it’s on fire, and the last thing she feels is burn of some unknown fluid filling her lungs before she loses consciousness.

**oOo**

_James stares in horror and fascination at the scene revealed within the oval frame of the Cheval glass: Molly Hooper, of whom he dreamt only last night, menaced by Colonel Sebastian Moran, Moriarty’s chief henchman. Even knowing the villain currently remains securely locked away doesn’t stop James from taking an inadvertent step away from the mirror, as if he might spring through it to attack he and Holmes instead._

_He squints; there is something obscuring Moran’s form now, a sort of hovering mist that surrounds him, as if his shadow has come to life. But the shadow’s face is not that of the tiger-hunting former soldier; instead, it is clearly the face of Professor James Moriarty that overlies that of the other man, lips twisted in a savage, gleeful grin. Holmes is fairly quivering with urgency, with the obvious need to_ do _something, but what can either of them do? Miss Hooper is trapped in her own time, on the other side of this very solid mirror, and they are trapped on theirs._

_“Last chance, Doctor Hooper,” Moran growls. “Sherlock Holmes. Where the fuck is he hiding?”_

_“Sherlock is d-dead,” Miss - or rather, Doctor - Hooper replies, her fear evident - but just as evident is her desire to hide that fear as best she can. James feels a sense of helpless admiration for her determination not to be cowed. “He’s not hiding anywhere, he’s dead.”_

_“No he’s not,” the man says with a mad titter. “Jim says he’s alive, and if Jim Moriarty says he’s alive, then he’s alive.”_

_The hairs prickle on the back of James’ neck as the ghostly form that encases Moran seems to coalesce into something more solid, as if given life by the other man’s words. There are strands of some strange energy that flow between the two forms, James can now see, and he fancies they are puppet strings. Moriarty seems to be whispering unheard words into Moran’s ears_

_Holmes lets out an impressive oath when Moran slams her back against the wall. As she wheezes and gasps, the door to the storage cupboard slowly back swings open, revealing the mirror. The man stares at it; without warning, he drops the knife and hauls Molly closer, grabbing a double fistful of her cardigan. “Tell me where he fucking is,” he snarls, “or you’re the one who’ll be dead.”_

_Then he shoves her against the mirror, and the insubstantial figure of Moriarty howls in triumph as, unbelievably, Doctor Hooper actually passes through the glass. At this Holmes gives a cry of rage; Moriarty turns as if to face him, triumph on his malevolent features. Moran is reeling and staggering away from the mirror in shock, but he has become the least of James Watson’s concerns. He shouts at Holmes as the man thrusts his arms out and forward as if to punch the mirror’s glass surface, but the shout dies as Holmes’ hands actually_ plunge into _the surface as easily as if her were reaching into the waters of a lake._

_Moriarty continues to howl, this time in pure, animalistic rage as Holmes’ arms disappear from view. “James,” he calls out desperately. “Hold onto my waist, I don’t wish to be pulled inside!”_

_He does as he’s bade, no questions, no room for doubts, and braces himself as best he can against the floor, holding tightly to his friend’s body, which is shaking and twitching as if beset by the very devil himself._

_There is a definite feeling of heat emanating from the glass, and James has a fleeting moment of wondering if they are attempting to save Doctor Hooper from the very flames of perdition._

_Holmes grunts with effort, then gives an all-mighty tug, and suddenly the two of them are pulled off balance, tumbling to the floor...along with Doctor Molly Hooper’s unconscious form._

_The image in the mirror has altered; when James looks up, he can see only a swirling mass of honey-colored liquid reflected within the mirror. Quickly however a dark form starts to take shape in the midst of it, and he shouts for Holmes. “What is that?”_

_Holmes pulls himself from beneath Doctor Hooper’s body. “Quickly, James! Your revolver!”_

_Later James will quiz Sherlock as to how he knew he’d brought his revolver; he will be told it was obviously settled in his jacket pocket, and Holmes will add, “And of course, Watson, you never enter a potentially dangerous situation without it. As unsettling as your dream-vision was, instinct would have driven you to bring it with you.”_

_But that is later. Much later. Right now, he automatically reaches for the revolver, pulling it out of his pocket and holding it to the ceiling as he cocks it. “The mirror!” Sherlock cries, pointing. “Shoot the mirror now! Before Moriarty fully manifests and leaves the spirit world for our own!”_

_And indeed, as James returns his attention to the mirror, what he sees is Moriarty, taking shape bit by bit, his eyes fairly gleaming with hatred as he become less indistinct. “Now, Watson!” Holmes orders, and without further thought, James points the gun squarely at the Cheval glass and pulls the trigger._

 


	14. Through The Looking-Glass

She was on fire; no, she WAS fire, inside and out, every square centimeter burning and aching. Even her hair hurt, and her fingernails and, oh GOD, the inside of her throat and her lungs...it was the nightmare only it wasn’t just a nightmare this time, the fire was real, the flames were licking at her skin, she was breathing fire, she was coughing and retching up more fire, whatever fluid that had scalded her lungs dribbling from between her lips and burning them as well. Hands were touching her, voices were speaking to her - soothing voices, familiar voices, but she couldn’t quite make out who it was until suddenly she heard Sherlock say, “Quickly, Watson, we must disrobe her - hang propriety, her life could very well be in danger!”

She was too racked with pain to wonder why Sherlock was being so formal with John, or when he’d come back to London. Nor could she manage the energy to protest when she felt her shoes being tugged from her feet. Her socks soon followed, and she could have sobbed with relief as the cool air hit her toes. She stirred a bit as someone - Sherlock? - started to remove the rest of her clothes, tried to protest - she’d take her own damned clothes off if it would help ease her pain, thank you very much! - but neither her voice nor her hands would cooperate; the former simply came out as a moan, and the latter flopped uselessly when she tried to raise them.

“Doctor Hooper - Molly,” Sherlock was saying, his voice soothing. Which was wrong, because when was Sherlock Holmes ever soothing? Still, she forced herself to listen, when all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and die. “Molly, we must remove your clothing, for your own safety. Do you understand?”

Molly nodded feebly, crying out once again at the pain caused by that simple movement. She managed to open her eyes just long enough to see him, to see the worry in his grey eyes before the pain overcame her, and she once again sank into darkness.

**oOo**

James, white-faced but with steady hands, aided Sherlock in removing the stricken woman’s odd clothing. Sherlock had bade him wear his gloves, and he was thankful for their slight protection against the acid-like substance that coated and clung to her. “What is this, Holmes?”

“Short answer: ectoplasm,” the other man replied, his cheeks coloring as he removed the final pieces of Doctor Hooper’s clothing - a scandalously abbreviated pair of underdrawers, and some odd corset-like item that seemed designed only to support her breasts. Sherlock’s hands were raw and red where they’d touched either her or her clothing, and as John watched, the Persian rug upon which the garments had been placed began to smoulder. “Holmes!” he exclaimed, but of course his friend had already noticed.

“Wrap them all in the rug and toss it out the window,” he instructed him, even as he raised the unconscious woman into his arms, heedless of the continuing danger to his own flesh and clothing. “I need to get Molly to the bath, to rinse away the residue with tepid water.”

“What happens if it remains on the flesh?” James could not refrain from asking, even as he began the task to which he’d been set. Ectoplasm - he shook his head briefly. After everything he’d witnessed today, that word no longer raised the skeptical contempt it once had.

Before Sherlock could reply, the sound of footsteps on the stairs caught their attention. He swung his body around so that Doctor Hooper’s nude form was mostly hidden by his own body, but there was no time to do more as the door to his flat burst open, followed immediately by the breathless form of Mrs. Hudson. “Sherlock Holmes!” she exclaimed, both voice and form clearly agitated. “What do you mean by firing your revolver…”

She fell silent as she took in the tableau before her, turning to James as if seeking reassurance of the reality of what she was seeing. “Our friend has, er, unfortunately fallen prey to one of Holmes’ experiments,” he said, making up what he hoped was a plausible explanation as he hurriedly doffing his coat and laid it over the unconscious woman’s body. “Her clothing was consumed by some acid that was knocked…”

“Who is she? When and how did she arrive here?” Mrs. Hudson asked, sounding quite baffled - as well she should, since any visitors to the building would be given entry by either her or Billy, the page.

“She arrived unexpectedly, and Watson and I let her in,” Sherlock interrupted, meeting Mrs. Hudson’s shocked gaze as he started down the hall toward the bathing-room. “I beg your forgiveness for not alerting you to her presence, Mrs. Hudson, but I must attend to her burns immediately

“But who is she?” Mrs. Hudson called after him as he vanished down the hallway.

His response caused both his landlady and his good friend to gape after him. “She is my wife.”

Shortly thereafter the other two heard the water running in the bath-tub. James gamely attempted to build on the fiction Sherlock had just given as the landlady turned her shocked gaze on him. “Er, Mrs. Hudson, I’m afraid Doc - that is, Mrs. Holmes’ - clothing has been damaged beyond repair,” he said, indicating the rolled-up carpet, from which a thin haze of smoke still depended. “If you would kindly give us the loan of a night-dress and dressing-gown for her to wear once her, ah, husband has seen to her well-being, that would be most appreciated. And I’ll just, um, attend to this.” He gestured toward the carpet again, stooping to lift it into his arms and chivvying her before him.

“This is...that is to say, I never...is that poor woman truly his wife?” she asked as she moved obediently back toward the stairs. “Did you know of this? How long has he - have they - been married? Why hasn’t he told me?”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Hudson,” James replied,, grunting a bit as he maneuvered the carpet between the bannister and the wall. “But this, ah, relationship has come as just as much of a shock to me as it has to you. I’m certain Holmes will explain things once his, er, wife has been attended to.”

“Shouldn’t you be helping him?” Mrs. Hudson asked, in rather a critical tone. “You’re the doctor, after all!”

“All she needs is to be bathed in tepid water,” James assured her, praying that he was speaking the truth. Sherlock had seemed quite certain and at this point he was the only one of them with any experience or expertise in dealing with ectoplasm.

“Then why is she unconscious?” was Mrs. Hudson’s next query, asked as they finally reached the foot of the stairs. She stepped to one side to allow James room to maneuver his unwieldy bundle toward the door leading to the kitchen mews.

For the first time, Watson felt an inkling of the annoyance his friend must experience when a disbelieving audience peppered him with questions. “She fell when the experiment mis-fired,” he said shortly.

“Oh, so that was the gun-shot I thought I heard.”

“Eh? Oh, yes of course.”

With that, Mrs. Hudson fell into blessed silence, and Watson was able to remove his burden to the largest of the dust-bins. However, when he unrolled the carpet to see what of Doctor Hooper’s clothing might be salvaged, he was greeted by nothing more than a few blackened scraps. Even the metal had been melted into a series of small, unrecognizable lumps.

He dipped out some water from the rain-barrel and poured it liberally over the scorched remains. Only when he was fully satisfied that he’d caught every last ember did he finally return to the building, and thence up to the flat where his friend and the woman from another century awaited him.

**oOo**

When James returned to the bathing-chamber, it was to find his friend carefully wrapping their guest in one of oversized bath towels Sherlock favored. Her hair was soaking wet and dripping over both the tile floor and the consulting detective. “She’s still unconscious, Watson,” Sherlock said in a low, worried voice. “Surely she should have awakened by now?”

He glanced up at James, his concern etched in his normally impassive features. “She has endured a most horrific ordeal, first being attacked by that mad-man, and then being forced into a realm beyond human comprehension,” James replied with all the assurance his medical training could offer. “It’s possible that her body and mind simply need to recover from that ordeal. She’s breathing normally now that she’s expelled the matter in her lungs, and if you haven’t thrown it away, one of my medical bags should still be in my old room. We can bring Doctor Hooper upstairs to rest…”

“My bedroom is closer, and my bed is far more comfortable,” Sherlock interjected. When James looked at him askance, he scowled. “No need to worry, Watson; in spite of my assertion that the lady is my wife, I haven’t fallen into some sort of delusion. It simply seemed the quickest way to distract Mrs. Hudson, and if Molly is to stay here for the time being, I’d rather not be subjected to lectures on the nature of morality if I can avoid them  


While he spoke he’d begun briskly rubbing Doctor Hooper’s hair with a hand towel. Whatever ribbon or other fastening had held her hair in place had apparently been consigned to the sink; all that remained was a small, charred mass, a mute testament to the acidic nature of the ectoplasm in which she’d been immersed. It was a wonder that the only damage had been the reddening of her skin; her breathing had returned to normal and her pulse, when he took it after Sherlock laid her carefully on his bed, was weak but steady.

Mrs. Hudson joined them after James had fetched his medical bag from upstairs; she’d brought not only the requested clothing, but a tea-tray as well. James was more than grateful for the restorative, and forced Sherlock to drink a cup as well. Doctor Hooper remained unconscious throughout, not so much as murmuring as Sherlock, cheeks pinkening in a manner James found quite endearing, dressed her in the voluminous night-gown Mrs. Hudson had provided.

While the landlady was exclaiming over the shards of glass from the broken mirror littering the sitting-room, James used the time to inform his friend as to the complete loss of Doctor Hooper’s clothing. Sherlock only nodded abstractedly as his friend spoke, his eyes never leaving the patient’s face. It seemed to James’ eyes that the redness was already fading, which he found encouraging, even if her continued unconsciousness was worrisome. Still, there was nothing to do except watch over her for any changes, and Sherlock seemed determined to be the one keeping vigil.

With a sigh, James left the two of them alone, bracing himself for Mrs. Hudson’s questions as he entered the sitting-room. “Oh, Doctor Watson, such a mess! And that lovely mirror broken to pieces. Still, it’s not nearly as important as your patient.” She lowered her voice as she asked, “That poor girl, how is she?”

“Resting comfortably at the moment,” James assured her. “Might I request the services of your page? I’d like to send Miss Smith a message, explaining that I shall remain here until Mrs., er, Holmes has recovered consciousness.”

“Oh, of course, I’ll just go and fetch him.” Mrs. Hudson bustled off, and James struggled to find the right words to keep his fiancee from worrying about him - or possibly attempting to join him. Eventually she would have to be told something, but what that something might be, James had absolutely no idea.

He slumped into the nearest chair, resting his aching head on one hand as he considered everything that had happened this very eventful day - and the night before. The dramatic emergence of Doctor Hooper into their world - and the presumed entrapment of the spirit of James Moriarty in that strange void in between the past and the future - had nearly made him forget the troublesome dream that had brought him to Baker Street. Almost, but not quite.

“Ah, Mary, I miss you still,” he murmured, blinking away sudden tears. The emotions that the vision had stirred in his breast were a mixture of sorrow, guilt and longing for what he’d lost, along with a generous helping of envy and even anger: why had his future self (or possible descendant) been so blessed? Or was he, too, doomed to lose the woman he loved? And if he did, would he find love again, as James had? So many questions, none with answers.

At least he could try to focus on Doctor Hooper. When she finally regained consciousness, she would have as many questions as he did...and none of the answers, he suspected, would be to her liking.

Especially once she discovered that there was likely no way to return her to her own time.


	15. When Worlds Collide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while, but I hope this update makes up for the delay.

_She was sunning herself on a tropical beach, enjoying the breathtaking view of the ocean in front of her. Sherlock was there, wearing a sinfully tight white button-up, black suit, and his Belstaff. “You’ll fry if you stay in the sun much longer,” he warned her, but she just rolled onto her stomach and told him to make himself useful by rubbing some sunblock onto her. She hummed her approval as she felt his long, elegant fingers pressing against her back, but when she looked over her shoulder to thank him, the words froze in her throat._

_“Surprise, luv!” Jim Moriarty chirped as he showed her the cooking oil he’d been rubbing on her skin. “Time to fry!”_

Molly screamed herself awake, arms flailing and legs kicking as she toppled over the side of the bed. She hit the floor with a loud thump, coming fully awake as she tried to orient herself. What the hell - ? This wasn’t her bedroom, wasn’t any bedroom she recognized at all.

The sound of pounding feet and a door being flung open caught her attention; she tried to rise to her feet but found herself instead fighting the yards of fabric in which she seemed to be trapped. Why on earth was she wearing such a massively oversized night-gown, and why did she feel as if she’d accidentally fallen asleep in a tanning booth? Her entire body had that telltale tingle to it that signified sunburn, something she was always careful to avoid. While she struggled regain her footing, both literally and figuratively, she reached out with one hand and gripped the edge of the bed as she finally made it to her feet. When she looked up, she was stunned to see Sherlock moving toward her with an alarmed expression on his face.

“Sherlock?” she said, shocked to see him - and thrilled. He stopped near the foot of the mahogany sleigh-bed, watching intently as she steadied herself. “You’re alive, you’re all right, oh my God, I’ve been so worried!” she exclaimed, wadding up the material of her oversized nightgown and starting forward.

“Doctor Hooper, I’m afraid you’re laboring under somewhat of a misapprehension,” he said, averting his eyes as she bared her calves.

The voice froze her in her tracks; it was Sherlock’s, but there was something about the way he spoke, the intonation of his words - ‘Doctor Hooper?’ - that was the slightest bit off. And his clothes, what on Earth was he wearing? Some sort of dressing-gown over a rumpled white button up and dark grey trousers held up by braces, clothes she’d never seen on him before.

Except, her mind whispered to her, in a vision.

Moving slowly, as if in a trance, she walked up to him. He made as if to back away, but Molly reached out and grasped the sleeve of his dressing-gown, halting him. Pressing forward until she was only inches away, she looked searchingly into his eyes.

His _grey_ eyes.

The swiftness of her buckling knees would have brought her to his feet, but he - this not-quite Sherlock - caught her in his arms. “You’re real,” she murmured. “But you can’t be...unless it’s colored contact lenses? Is it colored contact lenses?” she demanded as she allowed him to steady her.

“No.”

He had to be lying. There was no way...it was impossible. Sherlock was playing some game, or else he was still undercover...she pulled away, stumbling a bit as the voluminous skirts of her night-dress fell around her feet. “Sherlock, please, just tell me what’s going on. Whatever it is, you know I’ll do whatever I can to, to help you. You know you can trust me,” she pleaded.

His lips tightened and his expression seemed sad, so very sad, but only for a moment. Then the cool, emotionless mask she knew so well slipped into place. “Doctor Hooper, I am very sorry to have to tell you this, but you are no longer in your own time.”

She shook her head, dismissing his words. “That doesn’t make any sense, Sherlock - and since when do you call me ‘Doctor Hooper’?”

Sadness flickered across his features, before it smoothed into something approaching... tenderness? “Would you rather I called you ‘dear lady’?” he said softly.

Jerking back, Molly's eyes went wide as memories of a night four years ago filled her mind. Sherlock, drugged to the gills and somehow making his way to her flat. The way he’d kissed her, and the fleeting impression she’d had that another man had been looking at her through his eyes - _this_ man, the one standing before her, looking sad and a bit...lost?

Which was exactly how she was feeling at the moment. She studied him a moment longer, then eased herself out of his hold. He let her go, watching out of those steel-grey eyes that seemed far warmer than the blue-green orbs she was used to seeing in her waking life.

Could it be true? Could the man standing before her actually be an entirely different Sherlock Holmes than the one who’d faked his suicide two years ago? How could such a thing even be possible?

Shoving aside her growing bewilderment and fear, Molly reached deep for the detached professionalism she’d learned to master while performing autopsies, when her own emotions would only impede the answers she sought. She sat on the edge of the bed, folding her hands together on her lap as she spoke.  “You’d better explain it to me. Slowly, please.”

Sherlock nodded, as if expecting that answer, and then launched into an explanation so bizarre, so insane, that if it hadn’t been for her own personal history of inexplicably realistic dreams and daytime visions of the very man standing before her, she’d have questioned his sanity - or at least his sobriety. But his eyes were clear and pupils normal; he appeared neither manic nor depressive in behavior; his speech was clear and straightforward, unslurred; and his hands were stable, without the tell-tale twitches or shakes. In short, he appeared to be the Sherlock she'd become accustomed to seeing since his stint in rehab back in '08.

She stifled a nervous giggle at that; was it truly _back_ in ‘08, or was that date still in the future, as Sherlock was trying to convince her? It seemed more likely that she was suffering some sort of lurid delusion brought on by concussion. “I’m probably unconscious in a hospital bed right now,” she murmured, interrupting the flow of words.

Sherlock gave her a sharp glance, hesitated, then reached out and pinched her wrist. _Hard_. Yelping, she slapped his hand away, holding up the injured limb and rubbing it. “Ow! What the hell did you do that for?”

“To convince you of the reality of your situation, Doctor Hooper,” he said with a scowl. “The sooner you accept the facts as I have presented them to you, the sooner you’ll be able to accustom yourself to your new reality.” He rose to his feet, moving toward the window and gazing out. “I regret to inform you that I know of no way to return you to your own time and place, not now that the Cheval glass has been destroyed.”

Molly stood up, her stomach in knots as she made her way over to his side. She hesitated a long moment before turning her gaze away from his still figure and fixing it on the view outside the window-glass.

“Where are we, Sherlock?” she asked, twisting her hands together to hide their growing tremors.

“Baker Street,” he replied. “My flat, to be precise - my bedroom, to be even more precise.” Was that embarrassment she heard in his voice? “Forgive the impropriety.” There was a momentary hesitation before he added, “Solely for the purpose of explaining your presence here, I’ve informed Mrs. Hudson that you are my wife.”

He continued speaking as she gazed numbly out at Baker Street, but his words faded into a mere background drone as she took in the details outside the window. Instead of the modern, asphalt-paved road of her memory, she saw a cobblestoned street; instead of cars and motorbikes, a series of horse-drawn carriages paraded by. Even the pedestrians on the pavement wore quaint, old-fashioned clothing straight out of a BBC documentary about Victorian times.

Which meant that, unless Sherlock had gone to extreme lengths to fool her, he wasn’t lying. And if he wasn’t lying, then...then it had to be true.

She was no longer in her own time. The trembling of her hands increased.

Sherlock still seemed to be speaking, but she couldn’t hear him over the rushing of blood, the pounding of her heart-beat, the buzzing in her ears. She was hot, she was freezing, not just her hands but her entire body trembling as she covered her ears and shook her head _no, no no._ It was something to do with Moriarty, it had to be; she’d been attacked by that man, she remembered it now, Moran, and he’d been one of Moriarty’s men and this was some crazy scheme of Sherlock’s to take that madman down. She hadn’t actually fallen into the mirror she now very clearly remembered falling into; she hadn’t spent some unknown, agonizing time in a golden, hazy _somewhere/nowhere_ , choking on hot, viscous liquid that seemed equal parts matter and energy. No, it was just part of the nightmare, she’d never actually woken up, and when she did she would be in her flat, with Toby meowing at her for breakfast or, or she’d be in a hospital bed after surgery for a knife wound…

“Doctor Hooper, I implore you to calm yourself!”

Sherlock’s voice was raised in a near-shout, and she wondered vaguely why she could barely hear it even then. Oh, it was because her hands were pressed to her ears and was chanting - nearly sobbing - the word ‘no’ over and over again.

When he made as if to grasp her arm she pulled away from him, stumbling back and nearly tripping on the hem of the goddamned nightgown. “This isn’t funny,” she spat out, still shaking. “None of it. You bastard. Is this one of your stupid games? You know I can keep your secrets, I never told John you were faking your death, you-you don’t h-have to lie to me, for Christ’s sake, Sherlock…”

Her voice turned pleading, and this time when she stumbled she allowed him to catch her, to cradle her in his arms and carry her gently back to the bed. _His_ bed, if he was to be believed.

As he did so there came a sharp knocking at the door, which opened almost immediately after. Molly gaped at the sight of John Watson barreling into the room, dressed in the same old-fashioned garments as many of the men she’d spied outside the window, and sporting a bushy mustache that surely had to be part of a disguise? “Holmes, I heard Doctor Hooper screaming again…”

“An understandable reaction on her part, Watson,” Sherlock said as he rose to his feet. “She’s been dealt a considerable shock, both physical and mental, but I believe the truth has finally begun to register. Perhaps you could enjoin Mrs. Hudson to bring us up some tea?”

John huffed a bit at being so peremptorily dismissed, and insisted on examining her before doing as Sherlock had asked. “I can assure you, Doctor Hooper - or rather, Mrs. Holmes as I am given to understand I must address you for the time being - that whatever Holmes has told you is nothing less than the absolute truth. I myself witnessed your distressing arrival here via the Cheval glass, as well as the attack on you by that brute Moran. I understand how upset you must be at these events, but I also wish to assure you that both Holmes and I will do whatever we can to assure your comfort while you are with us.”

“Thank you, John,” Molly said gratefully, his words a soothing balm indeed. He flinched a bit when she said his name, and she tensed, wondering what she’d done or said wrong.

“Watson’s given name is James, not John,” Sherlock corrected her before the other man could do more than open his mouth. “One of the many differences between your time and ours, I’m afraid. And if you are disinclined to believe my version of the events that brought you here, I urge you to at least consider what Watson has told you, to reconcile it with your own memories - which, I deduce, have begun to return, have they not?”

Molly ducked her head. “A bit,” she mumbled. “At least, I think so. But it has to have been some kind of hallucination, when that thug shoved me into the mirror I must have hit my head, it can’t possibly be real…”

“I assure, Doctor Hooper, it is all too real.” She flinched at the harsh certainty in Sherlock’s voice. “Your denial is understandable, but it will not change the reality of your situation. It is the year 1895, and to my regret, I am not the Sherlock Holmes with whom you are more intimately acquainted.”

She bit back a semi-hysterical laugh at the ludicrousness of his words; she and the Sherlock Holmes of her own time were hardly _intimately acquainted_. Hell, she had no idea if the man even considered her a friend or not, even after she’d helped fake his death. Even after he’d kissed her.

 “I need…” Her voice trailed off; what, exactly, did she need? Time? Apparently she had a surfeit of that. Rest? According to Sherlock she’d already slept or been unconscious for nearly twelve hours, and had been awake for less than an hour.

“What?” Sherlock pressed her. “What do you need?”

It felt odd, hearing those words directed towards her, but at the same time it somehow grounded her, helped to push back the rising tide of hysteria she’d been fighting. “I need something to wear besides this,” she finally said, gathering up a handful of the nightgown and letting it drop again. “And then maybe that cup of tea while you explain to me one more time how I ended up in the Twilight Zone.”


	16. A Whole New World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Molly continues to deal with her new reality, and mizjoely continues to deal with her slow updating skills. Thank you everyone for sticking with the story.

_Previously:_

" _What?" Sherlock pressed her. "What do you need?"_

_It felt odd, hearing those words directed towards her, but at the same time it somehow grounded her, helped to push back the rising tide of hysteria she'd been fighting. "I need something to wear besides this," she finally said, gathering up a handful of the nightgown and letting it drop again. "And then maybe that cup of tea while you explain to me one more time how I ended up in the Twilight Zone."_

* * * * * 

The Twilight Zone, Molly decided, was exactly the right name to use for her current situation. Even though she'd gone through a looking-glass in a very Alice-in-Wonderland style, the unfortunate truth was that this was no dream from which she'd eventually awaken.

Three days from now she will meet Miss Charlotte Morgan, a spiritualist but much, much more than simply a table-knocking opportunist. A woman with a true gift who will convince Molly beyond a shadow of a doubt that she has no way to return to the twenty-first century, that instead she is destined to live her life here.

1895, London, England. During the reign of Queen Victoria.

Pretending to be married to that era's version of Sherlock Holmes for reasons she still wasn't quite clear on.

But before that final nail will be hammered into the coffin of her hopes of someday returning to her own place and time, there are more practical considerations to be wrestled with.

Like...corsets.

**oOo**

Molly doubtfully eyed the clothing Mrs. Hudson had laid out for her. She had only a cinematic appreciation for period costuming, and had no idea how half of what she was looking at was supposed to be put together. She admitted as much to Sherlock - or should she call him Mr. Holmes? - who immediately charged downstairs to ask Mrs. Hudson for her assistance.

A few minutes later she heard him returning with his landlady in tow. Her first instinct was to just open the door and call them in, but she paused as she heard him speaking. Even through a closed door - and under such disturbing circumstances - his voice gave her a thrill.

"The knock on her head and the fumes from the acid have left her temporarily a bit addled, I'm afraid," Molly heard him say in a confiding voice. "Not to mention that my wife has been living a rather bohemian lifestyle on the Continent for the past several years. Liberty gowns, no corsets, all part of her need to disguise herself whilst hiding from that blackguard, Colonel Sebastian Moran. Now that he's been dispatched, of course, Mrs. Holmes has been able to join me in London."

"The poor thing," Mrs. Hudson said, the sympathy in her voice entirely unmuffled by the intervening door. "Of course I'll do all I can to assist her. And whilst I do so," she added, her tone sharpening just a bit, "perhaps you can send Doctor Watson out to fetch a wedding band for her, since she seems to have lost hers. Wouldn't want people asking inconvenient questions as to the nature of your relationship, now would we?"

Molly bit her lip; this Mrs. Hudson seemed every bit as sharp as the one from her own time, if this was her way to letting her tenant know just how sketchy she found his story!

Apparently he agreed; after a brief moment of silence he let out a bark of laughter immediately followed by the rap of knuckles on the bedroom door. "Mrs. Hudson, I can assure you, that is indeed the last thing my wife and I want."

"Come in," Molly called out as soon as he stopped talking. As she stepped back away from the door, she couldn't help but wonder why he continued to call her his wife when it was obvious Mrs. Hudson knew he was lying. Maybe so he would stay in the habit if he had to explain her presence to others? Whatever the reason, she decided to save that question for another time. Not when she still had so many other things she needed him to clear up.

A half-hour later she looked down at herself in a combination of amusement and awe, fingering the silky fabric of the maroon dress Mrs. Hudson had provided for her. "Not one of mine, maroon washes me out, but one I just finished mending for my niece Prudence," she'd said, chatting about her brother's family and exclaiming over Molly's unfortunate circumstances during the whole getting-dressed ordeal - and never once alluding to her questionable marital status. Afterwards she'd bustled off to prepare tea, leaving Molly to find her own way back to the sitting room or front parlour or whatever Victorians would have called it.

When she hesitantly entered the room, both Sherlock and John ( _James, not John, another thing to try and remember, damnit!_ ) came to their feet. She self-consciously touched her hair, which Mrs. Hudson had brushed out and twisted into a sort of knot at the back of her neck, pulling the hairpins from her own tightly curled updo with no visible damage.

She tried on a smile as Doctor Watson ( _so much easier if she just called him that for now, even in her own mind_ ) hurried to her side and ushered her to the sofa. After fussing with the pillows and examining the lingering redness of her skin (which was healing far faster than she would have expected), he moved back to the chair he'd been occupying and sat...while Sherlock remained standing, staring at her as if he'd never seen a woman before.

**oOo**

Sherlock Holmes did not often find himself at a loss for words, which made this occasion even more remarkable. He stared at her - there was no other word for it - utterly flummoxed by the sight of Molly Hooper clothed as if she'd always lived in this era. To be frank, the sight quite stole his thoughts - and breath - away.

The smile on her lips, tentative to begin with, faltered beneath his regard. To rectify her misapprehension regarding his silence, he opened his mouth to offer a greeting, to comment on the rapid way in which she appeared to be healing after her ordeal in the inhospitable space between her world and his, but instead found himself blurting out, "Certainly you were born in the wrong era, Doctor Hooper; I can think of no other reason why those clothes suit you so well."

He heard a most definite bark of amusement issuing from beneath Watson's monstrosity of a mustache but ignored it. Doctor Hooper's shy smile more than made up for his personal mortification at speaking so familiarly to her; for that reason alone he would willingly suffer through Watson's future heavy-handed attempts at humour on the subject.

He offered her a seat on the settee, taking his own green leather armchair and noting from the corner of his eye as Watson took his own seat. "Mrs. Hudson is preparing the tea," he said, rallying from his uncustomary lack of focus. "As we have only a brief period of time to discuss your distressing situation, I feel it would be prudent to defer our conversation on that matter until after we three are again alone."

Doctor Hooper nodded. He noted the uncomfortable way she held herself, the stiffness of her bearing, and deduced it had more to do with her unfamiliar - although quite flattering, as he'd already told her - clothes than with her even more uncomfortable situation. "Er, if the, um, stays are too tight, perhaps Mrs. Hudson could assist you…"

Watson made a sound that was definitely a choked-off laugh disguised - quite unconvincingly - as a cough, and Doctor Hooper smiled and seemed to relax somewhat. "No, it's fine," she assured him. "I just can't help feeling like I've been dressed from the inside out for a BBC period drama."

Before Watson could ask the obvious question, Sherlock spoke, steering them back on topic so as not to waste the limited time they had before Mrs. Hudson arrived with the tea. "I've taken the liberty of sending a message to an acquaintance of mine who is an expert in the field of, er, psychic phenomena."

"A psychic?" Doctor Hooper asked, her expression and tone conveying skepticism - until she glanced about the room, clearly reminding herself of her current circumstances.

"Miss Morgan is responsible for sending me the cheval glass through which you made your unorthodox journey between planes of existence," Holmes explained. "I believed she did so simply that I might observe you and perhaps attempt communication...but such speculation is pointless at this juncture. I anticipate a response to my message by the morning. With your permission, we will join her in her apartments, where she will hopefully be able to answer whatever questions we cannot."

"We?" Molly asked. Sherlock found himself nodding approvingly; she'd picked up on that slight slip of the tongue very quickly.

The sound of the front door knocker interrupted them; he bounded to his feet, rushing to the window in order to peer down at the visitor. "Mrs. Hudson's beau," he announced as he returned to his seat. "I fear our tea will be delayed by some minutes." Hesitating only briefly, he turned to Watson. "Let us make good use of the time we've been granted. James, if you would be so kind as to share your recent extraordinary experience with Doctor Hooper?"

Watson looked decidedly unsettled at the thought of detailing his visionary dream, but he spoke as requested, eliciting both amazement and sympathy from Doctor Hooper as he admitted the loss of his own dear Mary and their unborn child. Holmes was forced to quell a most unseemly surge of jealously when she impetuously laid her hand on Watson's knee, and had to remind himself that the action was a sympathetic gesture, not a romantic overture.

Not, he chided himself privately, that he would have any say in the matter should Doctor Hooper choose to make a romantic overture to anyone. Nor did he expect her to, when her heart belonged to the utter prat his future self had proven himself to be.

A prat, his mind whispered, that was entirely beyond her reach now. As far as romantic rivals went, he might as well be dead and buried.

Mrs. Hudson's arrival with the tea was a most welcome distraction from his thoughts.

**oOo**

Molly smiled gratefully when Mrs. Hudson bustled into the room ( _hah! Bustled! Literally!_ the perpetual twelve-year-old nerd in Molly's head cackled gleefully) bearing an overladen tea tray. Before Molly could offer to help, the older woman placed the tray on the coffee table (did Victorians call it a coffee table?) and began fussing with the cups. As she did so, a young boy with dark curls that reminded her forcefully of the Sherlock from her own time came into the room, grinning happily and holding a small white envelope in his hands.

"Ah, Billy, a response from Miss Morgan already? Splendid!" Sherlock proclaimed, reaching out expectantly.

Billy ( _God, with those curls he looks like he could be Sherlock's son_ ) handed it over, sketching a quick bow - more like a bob - before turning to Molly. "Welcome to Baker Street, missus," he said with a shy smile, then dashed off without another word.

"Billy, the page boy," Sherlock explained without looking up as he used the edge of a stiletto to open the envelope. "A cousin. Twice removed. Not a by-bl..."

"Shall I pour?" Mrs. Hudson asked loudly, her reprimand unspoken but quite obvious. Molly blushed; had her thoughts been that transparent, or was it only Sherlock's tactless deduction of those thoughts? Either way, she was grateful for the interruption….and the tea. God she was gasping for a cuppa.

Mrs. Hudson remained only long enough to see everyone served, despite Molly's request that she stay and enjoy a cup of her own. "It's very kind of you, my dear," she said, "but I've company waiting to take me for a stroll." Without pausing for breath - or to allow whatever snarky comment Sherlock was itching to make - she went on. "I've made up Doctor Watson's old room upstairs," she said, giving Sherlock a stern glance. "I'm sure your wife will want her own place to sleep, at least until her poor skin recovers fully. And I know I valued having a space of my own while Mr. Hudson was still alive." This last was directed at Molly, who smiled and thanked her.

Sherlock and Watson had risen to their feet politely, but as soon as the door closed behind Mrs. Hudson, they retook their seats. "Well?" Doctor Watson asked, peering over at Sherlock with no attempt to disguise him impatience. "What does it say?"

"Miss Morgan will see us in three days time - enough of a respite, she states, for Doctor Hooper to have regained most of her equilibrium. She also included this," Sherlock added, pulling out a smaller envelope. He stood up and brought it over to Molly. She saw her name written on it and looked up in confusion. "If you wish to read it in private," Sherlock began, but she shook her head.

"No, it's fine." She slit open the envelope with the same stiletto he'd used, reading the enclosed note over twice to herself before reading it aloud to her audience of two. " _Fate often places us where we are meant to be, although I am certain it does not feel that way to you at the moment. Even though it is not your conscious choice to be here, I do hope that you will make it your conscious choice to be_ happy  _here._ "

She gave a nervous laugh. "I suppose that's her way of saying I'm stuck here. Is there any point to visiting her, then?" She could feel the earlier hysteria working its way through her nervous system, and wasn't entirely sure she could keep a lid on it. Yes, Sherlock had told her it was a one-way trip, but once he'd spoken of this psychic medium or whatever Charlotte Morgan was, hope had curled its tendrils around her heart. Hope that she might yet find her way back home, be Dorothy escaping Oz and not some wretched fairy tale step-sister trapped without a happy-ever-after.

She vaguely noted John-James-Doctor bloody Watson moving toward her as Sherlock plucked the note from nerveless fingers. He probably intended to deduce the shit out of it, but she couldn't be arsed to care just now. Christ, she'd been doing so well, or so she'd thought, but apparently it took more than a cup of tea to acclimate oneself to being trapped in another world. The companions on Doctor Who were apparently made of sterner stuff than she was, although she'd challenge any one of them to watch her perform an autopsy or two…

Oh yeah,  _definitely_ on the verge of hysteria. Or a panic attack. She forced herself to breathe deep, even breaths while Watson fussed with her pulse and Sherlock examined both the note he'd received and the one addressed to her. One thing was for certain: the more she observed and interacted with him, the more she saw that the similarities he shared with the Sherlock from her own time went more than skin deep.

_At least this one seems to genuinely like me. I wonder if he'd ever kiss me and then tell me we could never be together?_

No, he really wouldn't. She couldn't explain her certainty, but found comfort in it.

"So," she said, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in her ears. Or was it just because she was speaking over the heavy thudding of her heart? "Is there any reason to actually go see Miss Morgan? Because that note makes it sound like all she'll do is tell me that yes, I'm really stuck here."

"I can't say I disagree," Watson said, putting in his two cent's worth. "If Miss Morgan has no way of assisting Doctor Hooper in returning home…"

"I did not seek out Miss Morgan's advice for such a purpose," Sherlock snapped, tossing the paper onto the desk behind him. "I merely wished for her to explain the intricacies of the Aether or whatever outlandish name she has for the realm through which Doctor Hooper traveled to arrive here. And to confirm that the damage from the ectoplasm is only temporary."

"I already know I'm here forever," Molly interjected quietly. "You've made that quite clear. And my skin already feels better, so I'm guessing it'll heal eventually." She felt a hint of her previous panic, but ignored it. Now was not the time for histrionics; there had been quite enough of that on her part for one day, thank you very much. "We've all of us discovered that Shakespeare was right about there being more things in heaven and earth than we dreamed of, and now we have to deal with it."

"Doctor Hooper…" Watson began, but Molly interrupted him.

"Molly. Please call me Molly, at least when it's just us. I'm very proud of my title, don't get me wrong, but right now I'm sick of hearing myself called 'Doctor Hooper'."

"And you must call me James," Watson replied, reaching down for his medical bag. "With your permission, I would like to listen to your heart, perhaps prescribe some laudanum to help you sleep."

"Listen away, James, but I'll pass on the drugs, thanks," Molly said firmly. She couldn't help the way her eyes strayed toward Sherlock as she added, "I've seen up close what sort of problems over-dependence can cause."

"Indeed, as have I," James agreed as he adjusted his stethoscope. "A deep breath, if you please."

There was more conversation after he declared her fit enough to continue speaking, but in the end it all boiled down to the same conclusion: here she was, and here she was going to stay.

It was up to her how to handle that truth.


End file.
